Caves and Cold Waters
by Infrared-Ultraviolet
Summary: When 7-year-old Jack Overland rescues a struggling blonde mermaid from a net, a secret friendship is formed...one that will eventually blossom into something more over the years. But no good can come of a forbidden romance between the land and sea. Jackunzel, modern-day mermaid AU. Rated T for eventual swearing and sexual themes.
1. Age 7

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE PREVIEW PICTURE! IT BELONGS TO HoliMeiMei ON DEVIANTART! I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.**

 **Hi everyone, welcome to the story! Heh, this is my first Jackunzel fanfiction, so I hope it's not bad! I feel like it's kind of cheesy, but oh well. Anyway, I am in love with this AU and really wanted to write a story about it, so I took a stab at it and mixed some modern AU in as well. Fair warning, it doesn't have much of an overarching plot…the first several chapters are just drabbles about Jack and Rapunzel growing up together and talking about their lives, and it isn't until the later chapters that REAL conflict starts to kick in! My story was originally supposed to be a oneshot, but then it got hella long and I decided to split it into chapters by age, like in JustADreamAway735's fic "Leaves in Autumn."**

 **Also, just so you know the story is almost completely done at the moment, and I will be regularly updating every 1 or 2 weeks. But please don't refrain from following this because you think I'll abandon it or put it on hiatus, because I can assure you that that simply WON'T happen. I've put far too much time into this to not finish it!**

* * *

He was 7 years old when he saw her for the first time.

The trip started out like any other. Jack knew how it worked. Every year his mother and father whisked him off to a faraway beach, a place where work and taxes and mortgage and all the other nasty-sounding things that grown-ups talk about just popped out of existence. They got to saunter through the bustling airport past the important people with big suitcases (Jack got his very own suitcase for the trip!), and wait in the place with rows and rows of chairs and huge windows until the shiny plane comes to take them through the sky. He could never get over how funny the plane looked, with its blunt beak and its metal tail feather sticking straight in the air.

The airport they landed in was always warm and humid, stuffed with visitors like them or locals desperately wanting to get away to someplace less pleasant to escape the mass of tourists. They rented a car and drove to their beach house, with its stairs leading from the sand to the patio and the stylized diamond and semicircle windows overlooking the ocean. It was too expensive, but Jack's mother had always had a taste for luxury that she refused to give up. Every night at the fancy seafood places Jack would order fish sticks from the kid's menu. He didn't think he'd ever get tired of fish sticks.

Jack knew why his parents were so insistent on coming to the beach every year, and he thought their reasons were dumb. His mother wanted to bake in the sun until she was the perfect shade of bronze, and his father was content to wallow about in the surf for hours at a time, the sun reflecting off of the water onto his pale skin and slowly turning it lobster-red. Jack could usually content himself to build sandcastles and leap around in the waves, but the sand was limper this year and his creations kept falling apart. Not to mention the water was more crowded than usual, and he couldn't ride the waves for five minutes without bumping into some stranger.

It was then that he talked his older brother James into taking him to see the nearby caves. They were over by where the sandy beach hardened into sharp stones, so they were usually deserted. James was bored too, and was not hard to convince. Being 14, it was very hard for him _not_ to get bored during the hours spent lazing on the beach, and he was eager to have something novel to do. In the end, both of their parents decided that a teenager was old enough to look after his younger brother. Jack's mother didn't want to budge from her spot in the sun, and Jack's father was uninterested in going where the water might be any colder.

They hadn't been exploring the caves for long when Jack heard a loud spashing coming from outside. He told James he was going to go check it out, to which the teenage boy just shrugged and said to be careful. He swam out of the cave and spotted a fishing net snagged on one of the sharp rocks. It took him a moment to figure out what was trapped inside it, since the creature kept thrashing around and wrapping itself tighter and tighter in the mesh. It was a girl, about his age, with golden hair shining like sunbeams. But where her legs should be there was a long, bubblegum-colored fishtail. _That_ certainly wasn't normal.

He watched her flail around for several seconds, eyes huge with wonder. He had never seen a real live mermaid before! His father had told him they weren't real, even though he had heard a group of girls talking at school one day about a movie they had seen where some redhead mermaid tried to win over a prince by becoming human. Every grown-up he had asked had told him they were nothing more than an old legend, but here one was, right in front of him. He grinned, thinking how cool everyone back home would think he was when he told them he had seen an actual mermaid.

 _And they'll think I'm even cooler if I talk to one!_ Giddy with excitement, he swam over to the struggling mix of mermaid and net. She stopped writhing around briefly to look up at him with huge green eyes, filled to the brim with fear. Feeling a wave of sympathy, Jack reached out to pull the net off the rock. The mermaid jerked away from his hand like his touch could burn her.

"Hey, don't be scared," he said. "If you stop moving for a second I'll get you out of here. I'm not gonna hurt you."

"Yes, you will!" Her voice was shrill and cutting, much more so than he expected from a pretty little mermaid girl. "My mama says all humans are bad and awful and if they ever catch a mermaid they'll…they'll take her really far away from the ocean and put her in a ararkium!"

He smirked. "You mean an aquarium?"

"So you know about them, then," she said anxiously.

He rolled his eyes. "Well duh! But they're for fish, not mermaids."

"Really? Mama said humans put us in these big tanks and then they come and stare at us all day!"

"That's dumb. That'd be like putting people in a zoo or something."

"What's a zoo?" she asked, the fear in her voice beginning to subside.

"It's where there are a bunch of animals in pens and you go and look at them," he explained as he set to work untangling the net. "It's really fun."

"Oh." Her face fell. "They must be so sad, trapped in pens all the time. Taken away from their homes."

"I asked my mom about that once," he said. "She says they're actually happy. A lot of them are born there, so they get to stay with their mom and dad. And they get fed, too. Where I live there's a zoo where you can feed the zebras. Their teeth are so dirty!"

"Ew!" The mermaid made a face. "What's a zebra?"

Jack realized he didn't know how to explain it to someone who had never seen a horse. "Well…you've seen a seahorse, right? They've got heads like seahorses, but they walk on four legs and they have black and white stripes."

"Cool!" For the first time, he saw her smile. Her eyes glittered like peridots, making her look even prettier than she already was.

"What's your name?" he asked, using a sharp rock to cut the net away from her bubblegum tail. "I'm Jack."

"Rapunzel," she said shyly, looking away.

"You're really pretty," he said nonchalantly. "And you have a lot of hair."

Rapunzel's cheeks turn bright red. "Thanks. Mama doesn't want me to cut it."

"Where is your mama?" Jack asked, trying to unknot Rapunzel's hair from the net without hurting her. "I mean, if my mama didn't want me to talk to mermaids, she wouldn't let me go someplace where there were probably mermaids. You know, there's a lot of people around here."

"She usually goes away during the day," Rapunzel explained. "She doesn't get back until sunset. I swam out father away from the house than I'm supposed to, and then the tide caught me and swept me out here, and then I got stuck in this icky human thing."

"Well, you're not stuck in the icky human thing anymore," he said triumphantly, getting the last of her long hair loose and throwing the net out onto the pointed rocks. Her green gaze flitted from him to the water, like she was considering darting away into the waves. He reached out and grabbed her wrist before she could.

"Don't leave yet! I have to show you to my brother. He'll be so impressed that I found a mermaid!"

"Is he one of the mean humans?" she asked fretfully. "Is he going to take me away so I dry up and sell all my scales?"

 _What has her mom been telling her?_ Jack wondered. He laughed and shook his head. "No, he's nice like me. We'll keep you safe from the bad humans."

Her eyes widened. "But there _are_ bad humans?"

Jack shrugged. "Well, most grown-ups don't think mermaids are real. I don't know what they'd do if they did. But we're not going to meet any of them. My brother's nice, I promise."

"Okay," she agreed reluctantly. "But I'd be in so much trouble if Mama found out about this!"

"So you don't tell her." Jack pointed at the sky. "Look, the sun won't go down for a long time. You can get home before she does."

Rapunzel grinned, and he took her hand dragging her into the caves. "James!" he called out. "James, I found a mermaid!"

James swam into view and eyed Rapunzel suspiciously. He smirked, looking like he was about to tell his younger brother off, until he saw the pink tail flit out of the water. "Her name's Rapunzel," Jack added cheerily. James slapped his hand over his mouth. "Oh my god, is that—no way. She can't be real."

James reached out to touch Rapunzel's scales. She winced away, shrinking back against Jack. He gave his brother a dirty look.

"That's insane." He looked like he was about to faint. Jack reached out and grabbed his wrist to steady him. "Completely freaking insane. Where did you find her? How does no one know there are mermaids here?"

"I dunno. She was all tangled up in a fishing net." Jack shrugged. "But we can't tell mom and dad, okay? Rapunzel's real scared that other humans are gonna come after her and take her away if they find out about her. We have to keep her a secret and stuff."

"Yeah, who knows what people would do if they found out mermaids were real?" James said. "You're right. Best keep it a secret. Not that mom and dad would believe us, anyway."

Rapunzel let out a sigh of relief and smiled at Jack. "So he _is_ one of the nice ones!"

He grinned back. "Told you!"

"So you promise not to tell anyone about me?" Rapunzel asked, looking back and forth between the two boys. They both shook their heads.

"I like being one of the only people who know about mermaids," Jack added. "It's no fun if everyone else knows, too."

"Okay, well…" Rapunzel glanced out of the entrance to the cave. "I should go home. Mama will be back soon."

"Hey, why don't you come back tomorrow?" Jack piped up. "You look like you'd be fun to play with. I'm gonna be here for a while 'cause my mom and dad lay around on the beach all day. Can we play tomorrow, James?" He looked at him pleadingly.

James shrugged nonchalantly. "Sure, why not."

Rapunzel didn't look so sure. "But, my mama—"

"You said she's gone all day," Jack insisted. "Come on! It'll be really fun! Besides, I don't have anyone else to play with besides James, and he's a boring teenager."

"Hey!" James glared at Jack, but he ignored it.

Rapunzel thought about it for a moment, and then smiled. "Okay!"

Jack bounced excitedly in the water. "Yay! Okay, see you tomorrow!"

"Bye Jack!" She waved at him before leaping up out of the water and splashing gracefully back in, swallowed up by the dark blue. A single ripple was the only evidence that she was ever there.

* * *

Rapunzel wasn't entirely sure what motivated her to come back the next day. She had no desire to rebel against her mother, overprotective as she was. She didn't know why she so readily disregarded her advice, not only swimming much farther from the house than she was allowed to into rough waters, but seeing a _human_. She knew the entire thing was absurd, and perhaps a little stupid. But that didn't stop her.

It must have had something to do with the fact that she was instinctively inclined to trust Jack. He certainly didn't have pointy teeth, and he had even helped her out of a situation that would've ended in disaster had her mother ever found her. He seemed benign enough, with his soft spikes of chocolate-brown hair and his big, hazelnut eyes.

And Rapunzel wasn't quick to admit it, with her mother's doting love in the mornings and evenings, but she was lonely. She was homeschooled, and her mother barely ever let her play with the few friends she _had_ managed to scrounge up. The ache in her heart for a playmate is what kept her propelling herself through the water, heading back toward the rough tide and the sharp rocks.

She found Jack in the cave he took her into yesterday, sitting on an especially wide ledge. She asked him where his brother was, and he said he was over by the beach nearby, texting a girl on his new waterproof iPhone. He smirked, making kissy noises, and Rapunzel giggled. She asked him what an iPhone is, and he took a long time trying to explain it. After a while he gave up, and she told him it didn't matter.

All of the sudden Jack lunged into the water, grabbing out at one of Rapunzel's pink fins and grinning. Yelping, she darted away. It didn't take her long to figure out he couldn't keep up, splashing and smacking the water like a drowning cat. She slowed down so he at least had a chance of catching her, even if they both knew she was holding back. She screamed playfully as he seized her shoulders from behind, dunking her underwater. Slipping out of his grasp, she slid back up to the surface and pushed him under.

That was how the morning went, chasing and dunking and hiding and sneaking up on each other. By the time it was lunchtime, both were exhausted. Rapunzel glanced anxiously out at the rippling water and mumbled that it was time for her to go home.

"Okay. But I had fun today!" Jack said, grinning.

She looked at him hopefully. "Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow."

She shot him one last smile before diving out of sight, leaving Jack with a hollow feeling. It took him a moment to recognize it as disappointment.

 _Tomorrow_ , he reminded himself, swimming off to find James.

* * *

Jack noticed that every day Rapunzel stayed a little longer. At first she was paranoid, always fretting about what her mother would do if she ever caught her out here. She only stayed for the mornings, darting away as soon as Jack and James left for lunch. But one day he thought she left, only to find her sitting patiently on their ledge when he returned from eating his corn dog. After that she grew more and more daring, sometimes not leaving until the sun was sinking into the saltwater, drowning in the shimmering golden waves.

Their playing was always rowdy and boisterous, neither of them having any adults nearby to tell them to settle down. Much of what they did was the same as what they had done the first day they played. Chasing, dunking, spashing, diving, pushing, giggling. But often they would weave a plot in. One would be the valiant hero, either running from the villain or chasing him down so justice could be served. The other would be the ruthless villain who was either fleeing like a dirty coward or trying to catch the hero so the scumbag could execute some nasty plan involving world domination and the hero and all his friends becoming sniveling slaves. Sometimes James would join in their games, but it was rare, seeing as no self-respecting 14-year-old would be caught dead playing with a couple of 7-year-olds.

Sometimes they would take breaks when they got too tired, and were content to sit on the ledge and talk. Rapunzel told Jack some of the stories her mother had told her, mermaid fairy tales about mermaids saving sailors, only to be betrayed by them later and be captured and taken away from the sea ("And the moral of _that_ story, Raunzel, is never trust a human!"). But, of course, they always escaped back into the sea and found a nice merman, living happily ever after. Jack rambled on and on about comic books and superhero movies.

One day Rapunzel asked Jack what was on his swim trunks, and her told her it was Spiderman, the coolest superhero ever. "He can shoot spiderwebs out of his fingers and swing from buildings and stuff!" he told her excitedly.

Rapunzel wrinkled her nose. "That's gross."

"No, but he's so cool!" Jack insisted. "He's not actually a spider or anything. And he fights bad guys. Plus, he's got a girlfriend."

Rapunzel's green eyes lit up with interest. "Oh?"

Jack grinned. "Yeah, her name's Gwen and she's really pretty and she looks kinda like you. Hey, I have an idea!"

"What's that?"

"I can be Spiderman and you can be Gwen and I can save you from the Green Goblin!"

Rapunzel looked confused. "But who's gonna be the Green Goblin?"

Jack shrugged. James was in a bad mood today and had made it quite clear earlier that he was not in the mood for doing anything other than chaperoning. "No one has to be the Green Goblin. We can just pretend he's there."

Rapunzel had no idea who the Green Goblin was supposed to be, but she simply smiled and said, "Okay!" She could ask about him later.

"Help!" she screeched. She latched on to the ledge with her fingertips, pretending she was dangling off of it. "He's gonna push me off this cliff! I'm gonna die! Get away from me, you monster!" Rapunzel reached up and swiped at the open air where the invisible Green Goblin was.

"I'll save you, Gwen!" Jack splashed through the water and clambered up onto the ledge. "Pew pew!" He pretended to shoot webs out of his fingers, circling them so it looked like he was wrapping the foe in spider thread. He crawled closer and started aiming punch after punch at the Green Goblin. "Take that! And that! _Nobody_ messes with Spiderman's girlfriend!"

"Lemme help!" Rapunzel suddenly felt annoyed at seeing Jack get all the glory. She pulled herself up onto the ledge beside him and pummeled her tiny fists into the air.

"Come on Gwen, help me throw him into the water." Both of them hoisted up the villain and threw him as far as they could, imagining the heavy splash as he hit the dark water deep in the cave.

"Yay, we won!" Rapunzel bounced on her tail excitedly. "So…now what?"

"Now you go, 'You saved me! You were so brave!' and smother me in kisses," Jack said, imitating a high-pitched girl's voice.

Rapunzel's cheeks grew bright red, and her eyes widened in worry. "Do I _have_ to kiss you?"

Jack shook his head. "Nah. I'm not allowed to kiss any girls yet, Zellie. My mom says I can't kiss any girls until I'm 13."

Rapunzel giggled, liking the new nickname. She looked at him for several seconds, realizing she was actually curious to see what it would be like to kiss a boy.

And for once she did something impulsive, without thinking. Without over-analyzing. She grabbed his face and planted a kiss on his cheek. His face grew pink, and he looked away.

"I'm not going to smother you," she teased. "That's all you get."

Before she knew what was happening, he had leaned over and given her a small peck on the cheek in return. "Don't tell my mom," he said.

"She doesn't believe in mermaids," she reminded him.

* * *

Jack wasn't sure how to tell Rapunzel he was leaving on his last day at the beach. She didn't think he was going to stay forever, did she? He wouldn't have minded to. But unfortunately the beach vacation always came to an end, and Jack and his family boarded a plane back to Burgess and left the shimmering sea behind for another year.

"Hey, Zellie," he greeted Rapunzel when he found her sitting in their usual meeting spot on the ledge.

"Hi, Jack!" she said. "What are we gonna do today?"

"I dunno yet," he replied. "But uh…there's something I gotta tell you."

She looked worried. "What?"

"I have to go tomorrow. Back to where I live."

"Oh." Her face fell. "I thought you lived here. Are you ever coming back?"

"In a year," he replied. "My parents only take me to this beach in the summer, for three weeks. Then we go home in a big metal airplane."

"Oh!" Her eyes lit up with understanding. "The gray things that fly through the sky and make that funny noise. I knew they weren't birds!"

"Yes, those." He nodded. "I have to ride one back to the town I live in."

"I wish you could stay," she said sadly.

"Me too. But I'll be back next year!" he added hastily. "Around the same time. June 14. Do mermaids have calendars?"

She rolled her eyes. "Of course, duh!"

He grinned. "Well, then you know when I'll be back!"

At the end of the day, she wrapped him in a bone-crushing hug as he was saying goodbye to her. "Bye Jack! I had a lot of fun playing with you."

At first he was put off by the sudden affectionate gesture, but slowly hugged her back. "Bye Rapunzel. Thanks for playing with me."

She leaned back, and gave him a serious look, her big green eyes brimming with anxiety. "Promise you'll come back and play with me next year?"

Jack smiled. "Yeah. Promise."

"And promise you won't tell anyone about me?"

"Promise. I _like_ other people not knowing, remember?"

"Uh-huh." She wrapped him in another hug before splashing down into the water. "Well…see you next year. I'm gonna miss you."

"I'll miss you too," he told her. Then, without another word, she slipped under the waves as swiftly as she always did. He stared at the spot where she had vanished for several seconds, already feeling lonely.

* * *

 **So here's Age 7! This was the first time trying to write from a little kid's perspective, so my apologies if I epically failed at it. For some reason I can totally see Jack being obsessed with superheroes and comic books as a kid. So whoop whoop, we get a triple crossover when he and Rapunzel play Spiderman! Also, before you give yourself a headache trying to figure out what CGI movie James is from, let me inform you that I made him up for the sole purpose of chaperoning Jack at the caves. Because let's be honest, no parents would let their 7-year-old kid go off by himself! And Rapunzel's nickname is "Zellie" because Punzie is overused. I saw him calling her Zellie in this one fic I read a while back…and I liked that, so I stole it XD**


	2. Age 8

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE PREVIEW PICTURE! IT BELONGS TO HoliMeiMei ON DEVIANTART! I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.**

* * *

When they were 8, Jack brought a brigade of plastic animals he had gotten for his birthday to show to Rapunzel. His mother had been anxious about him taking them on vacation, claiming he'd lose them, but he had insisted.

He lined them up on his and Rapunzel's ledge and showed them to her one at a time. "See, this is what a zebra looks like," he said, pointing to the plastic figure. "And the one with the really long neck is a giraffe. And that one over there's a lion. They all live in the African savannah."

" _That's_ a lion?" She looked puzzled.

"Well yeah, the one with the mane."

"That's weird. They don't look anything like a sea lion."

Jack snickered, imagining a seal with legs roaring under an acacia tree. "Yeah, I guess not."

They picked out their favorites and left the rest on the ledge. With James wearily following, Jack and Rapunzel swam deep into the caves, minds lost in their games.

* * *

Jack remembered Rapunzel's birthday was June 22nd. The year before he hadn't found out until after the fact, so he hadn't been able to get her anything. That year, he decided he was going to buy her a cupcake with his allowance from last month. If he could find a place to get one, that was.

Luckily, his father got temporarily tired of wallowing in the water, and decided to go to a nearby street market. Jack eagerly volunteered to go with him, deciding that he would think of an explanation later to tell Rapunzel about his disappearance. At the market it took him a surprisingly short amount of time to hunt down a bakery, where he plucked the prettiest cake he could find off of the cupcake holder in the display window.

He kept it until the day before her birthday, hoping his parents didn't question why he appeared to be delaying gratification. On June 21st, he swam awkwardly out to the caves while holding the baked convection as far above his head as he could. When he found Rapunzel already waiting on the ledge, he hurried to hide it behind his back.

"Oh, Zellie!" he said in a singsong voice. "I have a surprise for you!"

Her big peridot eyes lit up. "You do?"

He whipped out the cupcake and pushed it across the rock. "Happy birthday!"

He could see from the look on her face that he couldn't possibly have picked a better one…and he had to agree. It was creamy white, with a rosy swirl of lavender icing (her favorite color), crests and folds gently rising and falling again. It was dusted with darker sprinkles, like violet raindrops falling on a lilac whirlpool.

She squealed in delight, snatching it up and looking it over. "Oh my gosh, thank you Jack!" she bubbled. "That was so sweet of you! Wow, it's so beautiful, I'm gonna keep it forever and ever, and _wow_ , look at all the pretty soft stuff on top! But…what exactly is it?"

Jack laughed. "You've never had cake before?" She looked at him and shook her head.

"It's good," he urged. "Peel off the paper and take a bite."

She tentatively took the liner off and brought it to her lips, nibbling off a piece. She let out another excited squeal as she chewed, nearly expelling the pastry from her mouth.

"This is so _good!_ " she said through another mouthful of cupcake. "Do humans get to eat this all the time? Wow, Mama's never given me anything like this before!"

"Usually we only get them on birthdays and stuff," Jack replied with a shrug.

Rapunzel didn't seem to mind him watching her eat, scarfing the cupcake down like a hungry puppy and letting out delighted squeaks every so often. Jack thought it was adorable.

When she was done, she looked up at him with a mouth rimmed with lavender icing. "Are you gonna bring me more human food?" she asked hopefully.

Jack grinned. "Sure, but I can't do it every day or my mom's gonna wonder why I keep taking a bunch of food to eat in the water. That's kinda weird, you know."

Her shoulders slumped a little, but she forced a smile. "Oh. Okay."

"What _do_ mermaids eat anyway?" Jack mused.

Rapunzel started to lick the paper lining. "Whatever Mama gives me. Fish. Shrimp. Seaweed."

Jack crinkled up his nose. "Ewwww! That's gross." He grinned. "I love gross things!"

She seemed unsure of how to respond, and settled for a giggle. "Thanks for the cake, Jack. It's the best birthday present _ever_."

She looked up and gazed at him intently for just a little too long, making him work his fingers uncomfortably on the rock underneath him, The affection in her huge green eyes was quite overwhelming. Jack hoped he wasn't blushing. That would be humiliating.

* * *

Jack didn't see Rapunzel the next day. Her mother always spent her birthday with her, and Jack had to admit that was kind of sweet of the old lady, as psychotic as she sounded. Rapunzel showed up the next day at the regular spot, but she wasn't alone.

"Look what Mama got me for my birthday!" In her arms she was holding a squirming, yipping sea lion pup. Smiling, jack reached out to stroke his soft fur.

"Cool!" he exclaimed. "What's his name?"

"I'm gonna call him Caramel," she said importantly. "Like his fur." Jack wondered briefly how she knew about the sticky brown candy, since he didn't imagine they had it under the sea. Perhaps he had told her about it.

"Yeah!" He nodded. "He's brown like caramel!"

Rapunzel snatched up a piece of driftwood floating in the water. She threw it as far as she could, and released the sea lion. They watched him swim gleefully away like a puppy chasing a stick.

She sighed contentedly. "Now I don't have to be lonely anymore."

Jack gazed at her, puzzled. "But you're not lonely. You have me."

"When you're not around, though." She said it so casually, but he could see from the flash of pain in her eyes that his absence hurt her more than she let on. He found himself wishing he could be here all the time, always at this beach to keep Rapunzel company. Always there to watch her imagination glow as she brought worlds to life with his plastic toys. Always there to watch her squeal over the simplest delights, her energy like the neverending rays of the sun. But he always had to go, on July 6 and not a day later.

"Sorry I can't stay," he muttered.

"It's not your fault," she said as Caramel came splashing back. She giggled as she tossed the piece of driftwood away from him again. "Go geddit!"

When Caramel came back, Jack swam over and tugged the wood out of the his strong grasp, laughing as he held it over his head where the sea lion couldn't get it. He certainly made a valiant attempt to, leaping up biting and snapping before tumbling back into the water. Rapunzel frowned at him. "Don't be mean, Jack!" He smiled apologetically and lowered his hand, letting Caramel snatch the stick out of it.

They played with Caramel for a long while, chasing and tousling and dodging nips. Jack thought he was cuter than any puppy (and that was a hard type of cute to beat), with his big dark eyes and his bushy whiskers. He decided he was going to ask his mother to buy him a baby sea lion, but he knew she would probably say no.

Rapunzel brought Caramel to the caves on several more occasions. When she did, the plastic animals laid comatose on the rocky ledge as she and Jack dived and splashed with the little sea lion. Sometimes Rapunzel weaved them into their romps with Caramel, climbing up on the ledge and pretending he was a sea monster that was devouring the animals one by one, and the survivors had to stay huddled on the ledge to escape him.

"Oh no! The great sea creature has found our hiding place!" she shrieked for a plastic camel one day, when Jack lifted Caramel up and put him on the ledge. He flopped over to sniff the array of toys, and Rapunzel let out an alarmed squeak. The moose took it upon himself to lead his friends away from danger, while the brave duck stayed behind to fight off the beast. Rapunzel pretended to poke Caramel in the head with the plastic bird several times, to which the young sea lion looked very confused.

"Yay! The monster's gone!" Jack said for the plastic lion when, at last, Caramel grew tired of being bombarded with almost-pokes and slipped back into the water. There was much celebration, and a great ball was held with a dance. The animals began to couple up in the strangest of ways—a tiger and a giraffe, a lemur and an elephant. It never occurred to either Jack or Rapunzel that there was anything odd about their arrangements.

* * *

One day Jack had been waiting for Rapunzel on the ledge for a while when she popped up with her fist clutched around something. She opened it to reveal a pile of strange light pink berries.

"What are those?" he asked.

"Coralberries!" she replied excitedly. "Mama gets them for me sometimes as a treat. I just thought…" She looked away bashfully. "Since you got me that really good cake and all, I should get something sweet for you."

Jack eyed the berries skeptically and took one from Rapunzel's palm. He plopped it into his mouth, and grinned as he chewed. It tasted like vanilla and strawberries and some other flavor he couldn't quite identify. "These are awesome!"

"You—you like them?" Rapunzel looked at him hopefully.

"Yeah! They're yummy!" He plucked the berries from her hand one by one, scarfing them down until berry juice was running down his chin. She giggled, and he quickly leaned down to wash his face off in the seawater.

"Thanks for the berries, Zellie," he said.

"You're welcome," she replied. She reached out and tugged on his arm. "Now come on, let's go in the caves!"

And they were off to their games again, filling the long hours until the sun sunk into the ocean and they went their separate ways for another night.

* * *

 **So this is basically a fluff chapter. Nothing much happens plotwise save for a little foreshadowing. Heh, plastic animals are pretty much my default toy when I write about kids because I played with them a crapton when I was little X3 And yes, Caramel is essentially the aquatic version of Pascal. Or Maximus. You decide which! So here you have Age 8…until next week, when we get to see Age 9 and things get a little more interesting!**


	3. Age 9

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE PREVIEW PICTURE! IT BELONGS TO HoliMeiMei ON DEVIANTART! I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.**

* * *

When they were 9, Jack found out Rapunzel's hair glowed.

In the past year both of them had become braver, venturing farther and farther into the dark caves with the plastic animals. James, who was still always nearby chaperoning, didn't have a problem with them exploring the caves as long as they were careful. But they were secretive about just how far they went into the water-filled caverns.

They were in a place so deep in a cave that they could barely see the sunlight anymore, making their plastic animals climb ledges. The animals' ship had just sunk, and it was up to Patch the giraffe to pull her friends out of the turbulent waters to safety. Jack was having a tired wolf try to pull himself onto the ledge when he heard Rapunzel cry out sharply.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I dropped Stripe," she whimpered. Jack's heart sunk. Stripe the zebra was her favorite. It wasn't like they had never dropped an animal in the water before, but usually Rapunzel would dive down and grab it before it was lost in the dark, wet abyss. They had never been this far back in the caves before.

Rapunzel shot him an anxious look and dunked under. She came up a few seconds later, her hands empty. "It's too dark. I can't see anything!"

And then, Rapunzel did the strangest thing. She started to sing.

" _Flower gleam and glow  
_ _Let your powers shine  
_ _Make the clock reverse  
_ _Bring back what once was mine_ "

Jack stared at his friend in confusion. How was singing going to help anything?

He was not at all prepared for what happened next. Her blonde hair lit up, and the light spilled down the long gold locks like liquid sunlight. Jack nearly dropped his wolf, still clutched tightly in his fist.

She dived under again and came up a few seconds later, triumphantly holding up the zebra. The glow faded from her hair as quickly as it had come, leaving the two of them in almost-darkness once again.

"Whoa!" he burst out. " _Your hair glows?_ "

Rapunzel looked embarrassed. "Well…yeah…"

" _Why?_ "

"Can I explain later? I wanna finish the game!"

"Okay," he agreed reluctantly.

* * *

"Wow, that's so cool!"

Jack ran his hands through Rapunzel's long hair again and again. It was starting to annoy her, but she didn't say anything.

"I didn't know mermaids had glowy hair!" he exclaimed.

She looked away shyly. "Well, they don't, really. Just me."

" _Just you?_ " He looked at her in wonder. "Is that why your mom doesn't let you leave the house much?"

"Yeah, she says people would call me a freak if they knew."

He smiled at her. "I don't think you're a freak. I think it's really cool!"

Rapunzel blushed. "Thanks. But…you have to keep it a secret, okay? You're the only one who knows besides Mama."

"Okay. But why does it glow?"

She shrugged. "I do' know. I asked Mama once, and she just said it always has and it's a special gift. I asked her why her hair didn't and she got real mad."

Jack regarded her sympathetically. "That's rough."

"Maybe she'll tell me when I'm older," Rapunzel said hopefully.

"Are you magical or something?"

"Maybe. My Mama, her wrinkles go away when I sing and she touches my hair. I don't know why."

* * *

On June 21st Jack came to the caves with Rapunzel's birthday cupcake. It was almost identical to the one he had bought the previous year, with the rose-shaped swirl of lavender icing, but it was chocolate instead of vanilla this year.

He had to wait a few minutes for Rapunzel to show up, setting down his bag of plastic animals and resisting the urge to taste-test the cupcake. When her blonde head finally poked out of the water, she let out a delighted squeak. He grinned. "Happy birthday!"

"Thank you!" she gushed. She scarfed the cupcake down, crumbs clinging to her thin, pink lips. "Wow, human food is amazing! You're my bestest friend ever, Jack!"

Jack waved a hand dismissively. "Don't mention it. But ah, I got you something else as well…" He blushed slightly, looking away.

"What's that?" she asked. Jack reached into the bag of plastic animals and felt around until his hand found Stripe the zebra. He tugged him out and pushed him toward Rapunzel.

"Here. I want you to have him."

She looked at him in dismay. "N-no, I don't wanna take him away from you!"

Jack sighed. He hated giving up one of his toys, but he also hated the idea of Rapunzel going home and not having a single plastic animal to play with. "No, I have plenty. I want you to be able to play with him all the time, even when I'm not there."

"Oh…okay." She reluctantly picked up the zebra. "Are you sure?"

He smirked. "Yeah. So you can think of my awesomeness all year long."

"Thanks Jack!" Rapunzel pulled him into a tight hug. "Hey…you wanna go for a swim?"

He looked at her in confusion. "But we swim together all the time!"

"That's not what I mean." She slid back into the water and turned to look out at the rippling waves. "Grab onto my shoulders."

"Okay…" Jack gazed at her in confusion, but jumped in after her and gripped her small, soft shoulders.

He let out a yelp of surprise as she surged forward, streaking through the water like a torpedo. At first, he pressed into her back in fear, glancing behind him uneasily as the shore grew farther and farther away. However, as Rapunzel scaled wave after wave, her pink tail beating like a whip and sending salty droplets spraying into his hair, he felt a rush in his chest. He let out a whoop of joy, taking a hand off of Rapunzel's shoulder to drag it in the choppy surf.

She glanced at him over her shoulder and grinned. "Hold your breath!" Jack barely had time to gulp a mouthful of air before Rapunzel plunged underwater. Forcing his eyes open, he could make out the blurry outlines of massive sea rocks, covered in stiff plates of coral and billowing anemones. He took it in for a few precious seconds before Rapunzel pulled him up again.

It didn't seem like long enough when Rapunzel finally turned around and set off back toward the shore. She had slowed down a bit, but his heart was still pounding. He climbed off of her back when they were back at the caves, his brown eyes wide.

"That was amazing!" he panted. "We have to do that again! I had no idea you could swim so fast."

"I think it's because of this." She casually splashed him with her tail, giggling.

He looked at her, floating on her back and smiling at the sea breeze in her face, and something stirs inside him. He didn't know why he suddenly felt drawn to her, like she was a sunny summer day and he was watching her from a window, wanting nothing more than to run to her and be engulfed in her completely. He didn't know why he suddenly wanted to feel her skin under his fingers again. He didn't know why everything made so much more sense whenever she was with him. But he didn't dwell on it.

* * *

 **And here we have Rapunzel's magic hair finally coming into play! Yes, even as a mermaid she has it! Magic healing hair never fails to make things more interesting. And yes, toward the end Jack is finally starting to fall in love with Punzel! THIS CALLS FOR CELEBRATION! *throws cheap confetti from the Dollar Store everywhere***


	4. Age 10

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE PREVIEW PICTURE! IT BELONGS TO HoliMeiMei ON DEVIANTART! I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.**

* * *

When they were 10, Jack stopped bringing the plastic animals. He concluded he was getting too old for them, and Rapunzel might laugh at him if he still brought them to play with. He knew she loved them, but every year between their summers together there was no telling how much she would change.

When she met him at their ledge for the first time that year, he noticed something was different about her. She had breast buds now, tiny but unmistakable. When he pointed them out, her blush was pinker than coral. "Mother tells me I'm going to start having to wear seashells soon," she said mopily.

Jack didn't see a problem with that. "That's all right! You'll look pretty!

Rapunzel blushed even harder. "You—you really think so?"

He grinned. "Yeah, seashells are cool!"

James didn't watch Jack anymore. Instead he watched Emma, Jack's new baby sister, while his parents did what they always did. Wallow in the tide, lay in the sun. Jack told Rapunzel about Emma, and she squealed in delight, demanding he bring his sister to meet her immediately. Jack couldn't help but snicker at the thought.

"She's a _baby_ , Zellie. All she's gonna do is cry and stink!"

Rapunzel's face fell. "But I wanna see if she looks like you!"

Jack smirked. "Am I chubby and hairless?"

"No," Rapunzel huffed. "But I still wanna see her."

"You can when she'd older. I can't just swim around with a baby. And there's no way I'm taking you to the beach!"

She crossed her arms and glared at him. "Fine, loserpants. Whatever you say."

"Who're you calling loserpants?" He jumped into the water and splashed her. Before they knew it, they were chasing each other around the little cove, splashing and diving and laughing. As always, they were happy to be together again.

Neither of them really noticed, but their games gradually grew more physical. More pushes, more shoves, more playful swats. A short, innocent touch on the arm here, a hair tousle there. When they went for swims in the open ocean, Jack came to love the feel of her smooth skin beneath his hands. He knew something was changing, but he couldn't put his finger on what it was.

* * *

They still explored the caves, surveying each one and memorizing all of the nooks and crevices. They didn't venture far beyond where the sunlight ended, but sometimes Jack could convince Rapunzel to use her glowing hair to light the way deeper into the watery depths.

But he knew she was scared of the dark, and he never made her go any farther than she wanted to. Sometimes he got the impression she only went as far in as she did to impress him, and something about that made his heart warm.

Jack had grown more adventurous in his 10th year, always wanting to clamber up the ledges and see how far up he could get. It made Rapunzel feel anxious and a little left out, since she couldn't climb much of anything with her flapping tail. But she could see from the glint in his brown eyes and his bright smile how much he enjoyed it, so she didn't protest.

One day, they stumbled upon a series of ledges that led all the way up to the ceiling, the highest jutting out of the wall almost 20 feet above them. The stone glistened with moisture, and Rapunzel winced as she pictured Jack's hands slipping off and him toppling into the water. Oblivious to her concern, he leapt up on the lowest outcrop and grinned.

"I'm gonna touch it," he declared.

"Touch what?"

"The roof!"

Rapunzel faked a smile back. "Okay, well…be careful!"

"You know I will!"

Jack scaled the cave wall with disturbing ease, leaping from ledge to ledge and seeming to always just miss the wet spots. He was agile, flipping and spinning his body as he approached the cave ceiling, but Rapunzel still held her breath. She opened her mouth to shout out a warning as she noticed his foot gliding toward an especially damp piece of rock. "Jack, don't—"

"I'm almost there!" he yelled down. "Almost there, almost the—AH!"

His foot slid off the rock and he fell ungracefully toward the water, thrashing in panic and screaming. " _Jack!_ " Rapunzel screeched, swimming under him to try and catch him. She gasped as his head collided with one of the ledges, making a horrible clunking sound.

He landed face down in the water, groaning softly as Rapunzel turned him over. She let out a whimper. Even in the dark of the cave she could see blood pooling around a spot on Jack's head, tainting the water. "Jack?" she whispered. His response was another groan.

"You're hurt," she murmured, half to herself. She looked at the wound and felt her stomach twist itself in a knot. She absentmindedly fingered a strand of her long hair. _I could help. I could make it all go away. But Mother told me to never tell anyone…ever…_

As the blood continued to seep into the water, Rapunzel decided it didn't matter. This was Jack, her closest friend, and she had nowhere to take him to make his head better. He could die. She didn't know what human to take him to, and she couldn't drag him underwater. She had to heal him herself.

Sucking in her breath, she took her hair and wrapped it around the top of her friend's head. Gently running her hand through his brown hair, she sang.

" _Flower gleam and glow  
_ _Let your powers shine  
_ _Make the clock reverse  
_ _Bring back what once was mine_

 _Heal what has been hurt  
_ _Change the fate's design  
_ _Make the clock reverse  
_ _Bring back what once was mine  
_ _What once was mine_ "

Brilliant golden light spread down Rapunzel's hair, flowing through it like honey. As she held her friend in her arms, a strange feeling came over her. She remembered the first time they met when she had been trapped in a fishnet and had needed him to save her. Now the situation was reversed. And something about seeing him vulnerable and motionless in her arms made her feel more important than she ever had in her life.

The glow faded, and Jack's eyes opened. He looked up at her in confusion.

"Rapunzel? What are you doing?" She hesitated, debating whether or not to lie.

"And why does my head not hurt anymore?" he added, pushing her hair away and rubbing the now-dry spot where the bloody wound had been.

"I healed you," she said, trying to sound casual.

" _What?_ You mean, your hair can _heal_ and stuff, too?"

"Yeah, so?"

Jack looked hurt. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Well…Mother always told me it's more important than anything that I keep that a secret. She thinks people will take advantage of my gift."

"Don't you trust me? Zellie, you're my best friend! I would never take advantage of you."

"Really? I'm…I'm your best friend?" Rapunzel's face warmed, and she smiled giddily. She had always considered Jack her best friend, despite only seeing him once a year. She shared a closeness with him that she had never developed with any of the few merchildren her mother let her play with. But for Jack to consider her his best friend—Jack, who came from a normal family and a huge human town where he had plenty of chances to find a best friend other than her—that was something special indeed.

"Uh-huh!" Jack gazed up at her, and she felt a stirring in her chest. She looked away, suddenly feeling strange.

"I was really scared about you, you know."

"Well, good thing you had your super awesome magic hair around to fix everything!" Jack replied cheerily. "What else does it do? Can it make you invisible? Can you use it to read thoughts?"

Rapunzel smiled and shook her head. "No, glowing and healing is all it does."

Jack briefly looked disappointed, but he quickly perked up again. "That's still really cool! You could work in a mermaid hospital."

She sighed. "Mother would never let me. She says that if I overexert my power, and try to use too much at one time, something really awful would happen. She didn't say what exactly, just that I would be…changed. Permanently."

"Maybe it would run out?" he suggested.

She shrugged. "Maybe. Mother never told me…where the power came from. What it means. Why it can…go wrong."

Jack grinned. "But that just makes it cooler, right? It's this mysterious thing you get to figure out for yourself!"

She gave him a small smile. "Yeah, I guess so. But…you have to promise never to tell anyone about the magic hair. Okay?"

"I promise." Jack looked into her eyes a little longer than he needed to, and Rapunzel felt her heart speed up the smallest bit.

* * *

 **Ah, looking back, this was one of my favorite chapters to write. Gotta love Jack's endless positivity! And yes, I'm introducing Emma into the story! How could I not? She'll have a bigger role later, once she gets a bit older. So here we have Rapunzel saving Jack instead of the other way around…oh, how the tables have turned! Hey, told you the healing hair will come into play. Also, there's some important foreshadowing in this chapter, so pay attention! And, of course, some ship tease at the end because we all know these two are gonna fall hard for each other :D Until next week, my dear readers!**


	5. Age 11

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE PREVIEW PICTURE! IT BELONGS TO HoliMeiMei ON DEVIANTART! I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.**

* * *

When they were 11, Jack realized he had fallen for Rapunzel.

It wasn't a sudden realization, but a gradual one. During the school year he thought of her often, gazing out the window and wondering what she was doing in a moment of distraction. But all throughout 5th grade he couldn't get her out of his head. She was always in it somewhere, diving through the waves or chasing Caramel around the cove. He was unfocused, diverted. His grades went down, his parents yelled more to get his attention, and his friends taunted him about always being off in daydream land. They suspected it was because of a girl he had become so inattentive, but Jack could hardly tell the boys he hung out with that he had a crush on a mermaid. Instead he insisted school had gotten more boring and his mind was forced to wander.

Perhaps some part of him had known for a long time, ever since she took him out into the far reaches of the ocean and laid floating on her back when they returned. He realized that the stirring he had felt was the first spark. But whenever the feelings developed, they only got stronger as the year went by and Jack couldn't help but fear for how he was going to hide them when he saw Rapunzel again.

It had occurred to him a few times that perhaps she felt the same way. The way she kissed him on the cheek when the played Spiderman, the way she squealed and hugged him the first time he got her a cupcake for her birthday, the way she looked absolutely terrified when he hurt himself falling off the rocks. He had never seriously entertained the idea, though. She could just as easily only see him as a good friend. And she was a _mermaid_ , for Pete's sake! What were the chances she would fall in love with some petty human, anyway?

She must have noticed him acting strange in the first few days after they met up that summer, but she didn't say anything about it. After a while he learned to mask his feelings, forcing himself to see her only as a friend to prevent any awkwardness. He still liked her very much, but he tried not to think about it while he was with her.

Nonetheless, he found himself staring while she wasn't looking. He found himself brushing up against her and pretending it was an accident. He found himself making excuses to touch her face and run his hands over the smooth scales of her tail and the silky trail of her hair. Nothing had changed, but at the same time everything had.

* * *

Their games had slowly started to fade into conversations. Although they still chased and splashed and pushed each other, more and more they would spend hours sitting on their ledge outside the caves, talking about anything and everything they could think of.

He told her about the human world, with its cars and trains and buildings that lit up with a thousand glowing windows at night. He watched her big green eyes stretch even wider with wonder as he described the jets that could soar through the clouds and the rockets that could blast into the night sky. She told him about the metropolis of buildings under the sea, made from coral, shell, and rock. He found himself falling in love with the vast, uncharted land under the sea as she described the chariots pulled by porpoises and the sea turtles and fish meandering their way through the submerged city.

Rapunzel took to bringing her paintings to show to Jack. It was a ridiculous sight at first, her dragging several large pieces of canvas out of the water and slapping them ungracefully on the ledge. But once Jack saw what an incredible painter she was, his laughter died away.

She painted everything in her world that she could. She painted the outside of her house, and the garden in the front yard, and Caramel, and coral, and leaves, and stars. She sometimes painted the city too, although her mother very rarely let her go there (and sometimes she had to sneak out on her own). Jack loved looking at the pictures, although he couldn't help but wonder how mermaids painted underwater. He asked once, but Rapunzel simply shrugged and said she didn't know how to explain it other than that their paint and canvas was different. He didn't ask further, figuring it was very complicated.

One day, she was showing him a painting she had done of a sea turtle when she suddenly looked up at him apologetically.

"What?" he asked, confused. "It's beautiful."

"I would do a picture of you, but…" She sighed. "Mother ends up seeing most of my paintings, and if I painted you, she would figure out that I had a friend I wasn't telling her about…even if I said you were imaginary. And she wouldn't like that either."

He smiled warmly at her. "Awwww, Rapunzel! You don't have to do a picture of me. I mean, I know I'm impeccably handsome, but I don't like staring into my own face _so_ much that I'd make you paint a picture!"

Rapunzel giggled, but quickly went back to pouting. "I wish I could. You'd be fun to paint."

"At least you _can_ paint," he said. "I tried to draw once for a project at school. I ended up making a community of stick figures with misshapen boxes for cars."

"I'd love to see _that!_ " she teased.

"Ah yes, and I made the stunning grade of a C-. Got counted off for not coloring it in." Jack rolled his eyes dramatically. "Can you believe that? They have the privilege to be in the presence of my fantastic artwork, and then they demand I _color_ it?"

Rapunzel shook her head in mock disgust. "Completely unbelievable, I tell you."

"Heh, I know right," He leaned back against the rock, smirking. "But tell me…what's your mom got against imaginary friends?"

She brushed a long strand of hair behind her ear. "Oh, I don't know…she thinks I imagine too much for myself, I guess? Always says I need to get my head out of the clouds."

"But how can your head be in the clouds if it's never even supposed to leave the water?"

She groaned slightly at the quip. "Good question. Well anyway, I guess Mother just likes to keep tabs on my friends, real or imaginary. Just so I'm hanging around with the exact kind of people she wants me to."

"That's kind of creepy," Jack said. "Do you think I'd be the sort of friend your imaginary friend-hating mom would approve of?"

"I seriously doubt it," Rapunzel giggled. "You have _legs_."

* * *

 **Yes, AT LAST! Ickle Jackiekins has realized his FEELINGS! About damn time, don't you think? Also, fun fact of the day: The imaginary friend conversation wasn't in the original draft of the story, but I stuck it in because the page break was in an awkward place, and also it cut off on a painfully cliché note. "Rapunzel's laugh was like bells and Jack loved it" or some shit like that ^^; Anyway, I really love their interaction so I didn't mind adding in an extra conversation.**  
 **Also, sorry if the chapters are getting slightly shorter! I promise they will get longer again as Jack and Rapunzel get into their late teens. In the meantime, you'll just have to enjoy these super short oneshot-esque bits and pieces from each age. That's all I've got D:  
And lastly, you may have noticed that I update on Wednesdays. I'm going to try very hard to be consistent about that, but I CANNOT guarantee that there will be an update next Wednesday as I may be driving to college! However, be assured that if that is the case, I will update as SOON as I arrive in my dorm and after that, I will be back to my regular Wednesday schedule. Thank you for understanding, and happy reading!**


	6. Age 12

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE PREVIEW PICTURE! IT BELONGS TO HoliMeiMei ON DEVIANTART! I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.**

* * *

When they were 12, Jack talked more about school. He hated it for the most part, and unfortunately middle school had not proven to be any more exciting than elementary school despite him switching to a bigger school and getting a locker. He was bored out of his mind by math and history, and could never sit still in class. However, he did love his drama class, and in 6th grade he met his best friend Hiccup. And science class was all right when they got to do experiments. So he claimed there was something to be said for Burgess Middle School.

Jack never understood Rapunzel's envy of going to school. Sure, she had been homeschooled all her life (and he doubted the authenticity of the things her mother taught her, if he was honest) but she got to do whatever she wanted all day long and could easily sneak out of the house when her mother was away.

She still filled the hours with painting, and often showed them to him. His favorite was a sprawling cityscape of the vast domes and spires of the mermaid city, all surrounding a massive shell-shaped building. He had initially assumed it was a palace of sorts, but Rapunzel had assured him that mermaids actually had a direct representative government with elections held every 3 years.

She offered to let him have the picture, but he had to turn her down. His parents weren't very attentive, but they would nonetheless think it was strange if he came back to the beach with a painting of a mermaid city.

She also talked about her books. For all Rapunzel's mother's faults, she was consistent about supplying a new batch of books to her daughter every birthday. Some were stories, beautiful tales woven about sea creatures going on adventures and mermaids who learned to swim up through the air into the clouds. Others were books about astronomy and history and all the other things Jack grudgingly admitted would be interesting if he were never tested over them.

Some days she would pop out of the water and start their day with "Jack did you know this" or "Jack did you know that" and proceed to spend the next half-hour gabbing about some interesting facts she read. He didn't mind—she was cute when she motor-mouthed.

Other days they would tell stories. Despite how much he liked her, Jack had to admit to himself that Rapunzel wasn't the best at it. She tended to just ramble through the entire plot, not thinking to put emphasis on certain parts or pause where it was called for. After a while she seemed to figure out that it wasn't her strong suit, and let Jack do the majority of the storytelling.

It was challenging at first, having the bulk of the story responsibility put on him. Jack barely ever read outside of school, but he started to attempt it so that he would have _some_ material to work with. After a while, the need to read became less prominent as he grew better at coming up with his own stories. Rapunzel told him he had a natural gift for it. He found that hard to believe, if he was honest, but any compliment coming from her meant the world, she he just blushed and said thanks. Rapunzel didn't seem at all disheartened by her own lack of ability, and was content to just listen. Most of the time.

* * *

Rapunzel often brought Caramel along to their get-togethers, just as she had when he was a pup. He had grown quite large over the years, his streamlined body longer than either Jack or Rapunzel were tall when he torpedoed through the water. He was still as playful as ever, darting around the little cove and splashing them with his thick flippers. Occasionally he would even let Jack ride on his back.

Sometimes Jack and Rapunzel liked to watch him fish, sitting on their ledge and watching him dive under the water and come up a few minutes later holding a plump spotted cod. He always looked so ridiculous, with the scaly tail hanging out of his snout, and the sight was always good for a good laugh.

"So does he live in your house with you?" Jack asked Rapunzel one day. Somehow it hadn't occurred to him that Caramel would still be a pet after his pup years. It was a stupid thing to think, he knew, seeing as sea lions were apparently the marine equivalent of dogs.

Rapunzel shook her head. "Oh, no. Mother lets him out so he can catch his own fish and we don't have to feed him. He can come and go as he pleases, but he always chooses to come back." Her smile suddenly disappeared, and she looked away sadly.

He looked at her in confusion for a moment. "You wish you had that kind of freedom," he said, understanding suddenly.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Yeah…sometimes I just wonder how long it'll go on, y'know? I get why Mother is overprotective now, since I'm still so young, but…she can't keep me in the house forever, can she? I mean, eventually I have to go out, have my life actually begin…"

"Of course you do," Jack agreed. "She doesn't _want_ you to stick around for your whole life, does she? I mean, in the human world, kids are expected to go off to college and then get a job and stuff."

"It's the same thing with merfolk," Rapunzel confirmed. "But Mother, she's…well, she's overprotective. She doesn't want me getting hurt. But I hate having to sneak around to do anything. I'm not nearly as helpless as she thinks I am!"

"You're not," he replied. "And you're brave, too. You've been willing to go out alone to see me and risk her yelling at you ever since we were kids."

"You really think so?" She smiled shyly. "Thank you, Jack."

"No problem." He smiled back. "I'm sure your mom will lay off a bit as you get older. She can't keep a grown adult cooped up in her own house! Besides, she's the one who's having to buy all your food," he added teasingly.

Rapunzel laughed. "Well, I suppose that's true. I just hope you're right."

"I will be." Jack didn't feel as confident as he sounded. Any normal parent would want their kid to go off and have a job and life of their own, but he couldn't help remembering something Rapunzel had told him 3 years back. Rapunzel's mother was always wanting her to sing to her, and make her wrinkles go away with Rapunzel's magic hair. It seemed as though the old lady had something to gain from her daughter, and she wasn't about to let the blonde get away from her anytime soon.

* * *

 **And here's the chapter where we introduce Hiccup because…why the frick not? I wasn't intentionally going to include the other Big Four members in here, but I figured it wouldn't change the plot much if they were just mentioned and didn't appear as actual characters. And I figured hey, it's much easier to have Jack's best friend be a character people are already emotionally invested in instead of some random OC that people are expected to care about just because he's friends with one of the main characters. Merida will get a mention later!**

 **And yes, mermaids have democracies. No reason for them to be stuck in the 17th century government-wise! Besides, I make a point of having the mermaids in my story be less majestic and magical and more like actual people…just with fishtails XD #destroymermaidstereotypes2015!**

 **And, unlike the Mother Gothel in Tangled, THIS Mother Gothel actually bothers to buy her daughter new books! She may be obsessive about keeping Rapunzel metaphorically tied down so she can use her hair, but at least she prioritizes keeping her entertained. Fun fact: It was originally going to be Rapunzel who was good at storytelling and Jack who sucked at it, but then I realized that Rapunzel is good at FAR too many things already. Add the magic golden hair and the fact that she's beautiful and a mermaid to the equation, and she's veering dangerously into Mary-Sue territory D: So I made her be bad at something to compensate XD It's also apparently a sign that Rapunzel has a thing for guys who are good storytellers…remember how Flynn/Eugene seemed to have a knack for it in Tangled? Yes, headcanon accepted!**

 **So then they have a heartfelt conversation about Rapunzel's containment, and Jack realizes something's up with her mom and her magical hair and Gothel's probably never gonna let her leave. Yep, spot on Jack! I guess that's about it…damn, this was a long author's note D: Until next time, my beloved readers!**


	7. Age 13

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE PREVIEW PICTURE! IT BELONGS TO HoliMeiMei ON DEVIANTART! I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.**

* * *

When they were 13, Jack broke out. It was an embarrassing development of the fall of 7th grade, and none of the acne medications he tried seemed to do any good. When Rapunzel's face popped out of the water for the first time that summer, he was guiltily relieved to see her face dotted with pimples. He had been under the impression that majestic underwater maidens with shiny tails never had skin problems, but apparently he had been wrong. Not that the acne made her any less pretty. If anything, it made her more…real. Less of a fairy tale girl, less of someone whose beauty was impossibly out of his reach.

Jack wondered if he imagined the split-second relieved look on Rapunzel's face. Maybe she had been worried about the same thing. But neither of them said anything about it.

"Jack! Jaaaaack! Guess what?" she chirped as she slipped up onto the ledge.

"What?"

She let out a delighted squeal. "I get to go to public school for high school! It was really hard to convince Mother, but I did! I mean, I can't do any extracurricular stuff and I have a really strict curfew, but that's okay. She's gonna let me go to school and make actual, real-life school friends and it'll be _amazing_!"

"So I'm not an actual, real-life friend?" Jack put on a fake pout. "I guess humans and sea lions aren't good enough for you, Zellie!"

Rapunzel's face fell. "Nooo, I mean like…year-round friends. Mermaids. I didn't mean—"

Jack rolled his eyes. "Chill, Zellie, I was just kidding. I know what you mean. I'm really happy for you."

"Really?" She beamed and wrapped him up in a tight hug. "Thank you, Jack!"

And he was happy for her, truly. But he couldn't help but feel jealous.

All this time, he had thought of himself as one of Rapunzel's only friends…her best friend. He had her all to himself, and it was oddly satisfying. But now he was going to have to share her. Being as chipper and bubbly as she was, she would have no problem finding a new best friend who wasn't him.

But what really made his heart sink was that she would be meeting plenty of merboys, all of whom she'd see every day for nine months (or however long the mermaid school year was, anyway) instead of the measly one and a half months they had together. He had always felt it was hopeless to expect anything to come of his feelings, but now it seemed like a lost cause. Why would Rapunzel want to be with a human when she could be with one of her own kind?

* * *

On July 4, Jack was more than happy to escape the festivities of the beach. It was always suffocatingly crowded during the holiday, with the towels sprawled out on the sand practically making the beach look like a quilt. Even after he had weaved his way through the crowd and swam to the caves, he could still hear the noisy din of voices.

"I wish it wasn't so loud," he complained to Rapunzel.

"Why don't we go into one of the caves so it blocks out the noise?" she suggested.

"Okay." They swam into the largest cave and pulled themselves up onto a familiar ledge, one near to the entrance that they had sat on many times.

"So much commotion just for a bunch of old guys signing a dumb document a long time ago," he joked. "But I can't complain. My family always gets fried chicken for dinner and then goes and sees the fireworks. Hey, have you ever seen the fireworks?"

She looked at him in confusion. "The what?"

"So I guess you haven't, then. You should come out of the water tonight, around 10. They're huge color explosions in the sky and they look really cool."

"So _that's_ the noise I always hear. I asked Mother about it one time, and she said it's the sound of sea serpents battling and crashing up against one another, and it's just another example of why the open sea is a strange and dangerous place."

Jack laughed. "Nope, I can assure you they're perfectly safe…except for your ears, perhaps. They're pretty loud. But yeah, you should definitely sneak up here and watch them!"

"Oh! Do you think you could come watch them with me?" Her eyes lit up. "Since your beach house is pretty close to here. Could you sneak out?"

He shook his head sadly. "No…I have to go with my family. They're gonna notice if I sneak off. I wish I could, though."

"Oh." Her face fell, and she wasn't the only one to feel disappointed. Jack was suddenly lost in a daydream of her leaning onto his shoulder as they watched the reds and greens and golds swell like a balloon before falling away into the stars. He imagined himself turning to look at her, grabbing her face as she looked at him in surprise. He imagined himself pressing his mouth against hers. And never in his life did he think he had wanted anything so bad.

* * *

 **YES, JACK AND RAPUNZEL MUST NOW DEAL WITH THE LOATHSOME ACNE! I've had trouble with it for years, so I vent my ongoing annoyance by forcing it on fictional characters :D So yeah, Punzel convinces her mother to send her to public school in order to make her life more interesting! Jack meanwhile feels a little jealous for the first time, because he's never really had to share her friendship and now he does. I didn't really want him to come across as possessive, but keep in mind that the entire time they've known each other they've had this dynamic of him being one of very few important people (and sea lions) in her life, and now he's worried about how this new change will affect their relationship.**

 **Ah yes, the all-too-common fantasy of kissing your crush and feeling fireworks while watching actual fireworks! Came so damn close to that becoming a reality for me this past summer because I had my very first boyfriend, but alas, I was in France during the 4th of July! And said boyfriend has since dumped me, so looks like next summer will be devoid of firework kisses X( So I feel Jack's pain. But hey, at least he has many more years yet to kiss his crush under the fireworks XD**


	8. Age 14

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE PREVIEW PICTURE! IT BELONGS TO HoliMeiMei ON DEVIANTART! I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.**

* * *

When they were 14, Jack gathered up the courage to ask Rapunzel about romance.

He hated to do it, he really did. He knew that on the off-chance she did have feelings for him, she probably wouldn't tell him such an important fact as the answer to a casual question. And he didn't really want to know if she was obsessively fawning over someone else. Nonetheless, he was genuinely curious. That, and he was hoping to get the reassurance that no, she wasn't interested in anyone and he still had half a chance.

"So Rapunzel," he started the conversation, plastering on his signature smirk to hide how much his stomach was tingling. "You've been at that new school of yours for a year now. Have you been hit in the back with Cupid's unwelcome arrow yet?"

She gave him a look of utter bewilderment. "What?"

He felt suddenly foolish, realizing that mermaids probably had an entirely different set of myths and cultural characters that probably didn't include Cupid. Nonetheless, his grin didn't falter as he went on. "You know… _liked_ anyone? Done any _dating?_ "

"Oh!" She smiled in realization before looking coyly away. "Well, I…there was this one boy…"

"Do tell, do tell," he pried, leaning up against the rock wall behind the ledge.

She smiled fondly. "Well, his name was Flynn Rider. He's a year older than me. I really liked him a lot, and…he liked me too! Can you believe it? Mother always told me I was too clumsy and awkward to ever win anyone's affections."

 _Has she really been telling her daughter that?_ Jack wondered angrily. "That's bullshit. Rapunzel, don't listen to a word she says," he said fiercely. "I don't find it surprising at all that someone liked you. Any boy who can't see how amazing you are is an idiot."

"Oh, you…you think so?" Rapunzel's cheeks turned bright pink.

"Of course I do," he replied, touching a hand to her shoulder. "I don't know why your mother tells you you're not good enough, because you're _more_ than good enough. You're awesome. Now tell me about this Flynn Rider."

He didn't like how the name felt in his mouth, but he smiled for her sake.

He let her tell him everything. How she fawned over him in her P.E. class, how she was always trying to impress him and consequently making an idiot out of herself. How she finally succeeded when she used her hair to tie up her opponents during the wrestling unit. How he had asked her to the underwater lantern festival, and they had had their first kiss there. How as the months rolled by, the sparks she had once felt gradually began to simmer away. How they didn't have nearly as much in common as she thought. How she had never said that she loved him. How she had finally left him when she had started to feel like she was leading him on, her shallow crush gone like bubbles to the surface of water.

"I think it really upset him," she admitted. "He ended up liking me way more than I thought he was going to. But I just…I don't know, after a few months it just wasn't _exciting_ to be with him anymore. Kissing him wasn't even that great. It's funny…you get this silly little crush and think it's true love, and then when you actually win them over, you find out it's anything but."

 _I doubt I'd think that if I somehow won_ you _over,_ Jack thought.

"Relationships can be so disappointing," Rapunzel went on. "You just think it's going to be so magical and romantic, and then it just feels…ordinary, I guess."

"Maybe you just haven't found the right person yet," Jack suggested. His heart beat stupidly fast if he wondered if _he_ was the right person. He reached out and gave her hand a comforting squeeze, letting his fingers linger around hers a little longer than they needed to.

She smiled at him, and squeezed his hand back. "I hope you're right."

They sat there for a few seconds, their hands tangled together, before Jack awkwardly tugged his away. He wondered if it meant anything, the fact that she let their fingers touch for so long, but quickly brushed it off as wishful thinking.

"So what about you?" she asked. "Do you like anyone?"

"Well, I haven't found myself in a relationship with some hotso in my gym class, that's for sure. But I guess there's…" Jack scrunched his brow in thought, trying to come up with a girl he could tell Rapunzel about so that he could be even with her. But the embarrassing truth was that he barely noticed the girls at his school. The pretty ones only received an aside glance from him and a passive, emotionless thought of _yes, that girl is attractive_. Even the hottest cheerleader seemed bland in comparison to Rapunzel.

"I've got nothing for ya, Zellie," he answered truthfully. "The girls I know aren't much to write home about. Some of them are cute, but most are airheaded bimbos."

She glared at him. "That's not very nice!"

He shrugged. "'t's true, though. My friend Hiccup, though… _he's_ sure found himself a girl to chase. And probably the worst one in the school, I might add."

Rapunzel's green eyes widened. "Oh, who?"

"Astrid Hofferson." Jack stuck out his tongue in disgust. "Captain of the basketball team, leader of the fencing club, and one of the toughest girls in the school. She thinks Hic and I are absolutely pathetic." He let out a snicker and shook his head. "Tripped the both of us in the hallway the other day, right in front of all her jock friends. Man, I didn't know a human being could laugh as hard as those guys did." Rapunzel cringed, nodding sympathetically.

"And yet _still_ he insists on going after that psycho," Jack went on. "I keep telling him 'Hic, dude, it's hopeless. She hates us.' But does he listen to me? Nooooo!" Jack rolled his eyes. "Won't stop talking about her either. It's always Astrid this, Astrid that! 'Oooooh, look how hot Astrid looks in a wrestling uniform! Whoa, Astrid wore such a pretty Goth dress on Wednesday! Astrid punched some douchebag who was hitting on her in the face, and it was awesome!'" The blonde mermaid laughed as he mimicked Hiccup in a silly, high-pitched tone.

"Well, maybe she'll change her mind about him someday," Rapunzel said, although she was still giggling.

"Oh, sure," Jack snorted. "If you believe in miracles, that is."

* * *

Rapunzel was enamored with her new school. Why she actually enjoyed wasting her hours away in a classroom learning things and doing assignment that would probably prove useless in her life, and having to do yet more work as soon as she got home was something he couldn't even begin to comprehend, but he could understand why she was excited about some things about it.

She was more than eager to talk about her two new friends, Anna and Merida. She mused about how strange it was that they were both redheaded with blue eyes, and yet couldn't possibly be more different. Anna was always getting tangled up in seaweed or getting her hair caught on rocks and yet managed to giggle it off. Merida streaked through the water like a shark, ready to chew off the head of anything that got between her and what she wanted.

The more Jack heard about Merida, the stranger he thought that Rapunzel would be friends with someone like her. With Anna, it made sense…with her constant laughter and sunny disposition, she sounded like a redheaded version of Rapunzel. But Merida was obsessed with sports and had what sounded like an insufferable competitive streak. She was quick to yell, and Jack wondered how her short temper didn't gnaw at his friend's sensitivity. Perhaps the blonde mermaid was tougher than he thought.

Jack told Rapunzel eagerly about how he and Hiccup had tried out for the school play, an epic drama about a cafeteria lady who snapped and went on a killing spree. "We got cast as extras," he explained excitedly. "We got to be students who died gory deaths, and it was great!" He also didn't fail to mention how he got to be an extra in The Lion King musical as well, sporting an impressive pair of antlers as a background antelope with no relevance to the plot. Rapunzel seemed impressed, despite his lack of any lines in both cases.

So the hours rolled by just as they always had, filled with talking and playing around in the water and roaming the caves and clinging to her back as she took him on rides on the waves. He saw her almost every day of that 6 weeks he spent in the seaside town, but he found he could never get bored of her. In fact, every year seemed to pass faster than the last, and every year going home hurt a little more.

* * *

 **And now, we briefly introduce…Flynnzel! But of course it's not to last because this IS a Jackunzel fic, after all. It doesn't go down in flames or anything, it actually…just simmers out the way many real-life relationships do. Heh, here's some advice for you. Want to sink a Disney ship in fanfiction? Just add realism XD No need to put in cheating or huge fights or anything dramatic like that…just have them be like "Whoop, looks like the 'love at first sight' we experienced was actually just physical attraction and excessive hormones! Our bad!" and have them get bored of each other after like a month. As much as I love Disney, the ridiculously fast-paced and overly-perfect romance is easy to make fun of XD Although poor Flynn did get screwed over a bit here D: But honestly I never intended for Flynn and Rapunzel's relationship to be a big part of the story…just another obstacle for Jack to get past before he can get Rapunzel1 And we all know he will! Also, hints of one-sided Hiccstrid ftw. Sometimes I think this ship was a lot more fun BEFORE they got together, what with Hiccup's hopeless adorable crush on her, and Astrid being like "I don't have time for pathetic boys, I need to kick some dragon ass!" Classic Astrid.**

 **And I told you I'd bring Merida in later, so here she is! Anna from Frozen as well, since to me it makes a lot more sense for her to be friends with Rapunzel than Merida. Also, am I the only one who sees Jack as a total theater kid in a modern AU? So often in modern AUs I see him as the loner skater boy bad boy who's super misunderstood and smokes and does lots of drugs, but…he's quite theatrical and outgoing (you just can't really see it because no one believes in him, but look at his memories!) as well as fun-loving and he has a bit of an inflated ego, so to me he seems to be EXACTLY what a theater kid would be like. And I've known a lot of theater boys, so I know how goofy and overdramatic they can be. I can't be the only one who sees it!**

 **So I thespianized him. However, I decided that, due to my own bitterness over my failed high school acting career (I auditioned for plays five times—FIVE TIMES—and not a single callback!), there was no way I was letting him be that one annoying kid who gets all the fucken major parts OVER AND OVER AGAIN. So he gets stuck being minor extras, just like I did for the senior play I finally got to be in XD**

 **Also, on a side note, I have a TENTATIVE sequel planned to this story which I MAY OR MAY NOT write which includes Flynn Rider/Eugene Fitzherbert as a non-merman supporting character. If I do indeed decide to follow through with that story, I'm going to have to go back and make Rapunzel's high school boyfriend into some random OC and not Flynn/Eugene specifically. Just a heads up so that if you're going back and rereading this story for some reason after the potential sequel was posted, you won't be all like "Wait, why is Rapunzel's ex-boyfriend suddenly named [insert new name here]? I AM A BAFFLED POTATO!" I don't want you to be a baffled potato. That's why I'm including this note. Again, the sequel is anything but a sure thing, but I just thought I'd include a notice anyway.**


	9. Age 15

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE PREVIEW PICTURE! IT BELONGS TO HoliMeiMei ON DEVIANTART! I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.**

* * *

When they were 15, Jack really noticed for the first time what a beautiful singing voice Rapunzel had.

He'd heard the legends, of course. About how mermaids had the most gorgeous songs in the world, songs they used to lure unsuspecting sailors to their deaths. Music meant to be a sweet poison, to kill you in the most enchanting way possible.

He'd often wondered if there were any truths to the myths when he listened to Rapunzel sing to light up her hair. It was certainly mesmerizing, and he concluded if he were a sailor and he saw her singing on a rock, he might well jump into the surf and drown trying to reach her. And for better or for worse, her voice only got prettier and prettier over the years. He wondered how she sang so perfectly without taking any sort of voice lessons, but determined it was probably a mermaid thing.

Sometimes he would ask her to sing for him. It wasn't often since it was a request she didn't seem to like much, always tensing up and frowning when he asked. Nonetheless, she always obliged him, and before the summer was over, she had gone through most of the songs she knew.

He had often wondered why singing seemed to make her despondent, and one day he decided to ask.

"Why don't you like singing?"

"Oh, I like it fine," she answered curtly.

"No you don't, Zellie." He frowned at her. "You get this pouty face on every time I ask!"

"I just don't know what the big _deal_ about my singing is!" Rapunzel said sharply. "Mother always wants me to do it. When she comes home at night, that's the _first_ thing she mentions and she won't talk to me about anything else until I've sung to her. And she never lets me take a day off, either! It just feels so… _stupid_ , singing that same damn flower song every single day. It's like that one song is more important than…than _me._ "

Jack regarded her sympathetically. It wasn't often Rapunzel cursed, and he could tell the issue really upset her.

"It's just come to feel like such an obligation," she finished quietly. "Singing. It's not something I really enjoy anymore."

"Okay." He looked away guiltily. "I won't ask you to sing anymore. I feel bad that I asked as much as I did…I could kinda tell it bothered you…"

Rapunzel looked at him wide-eyed, shaking her head rapidly. "No, no, don't feel bad! I don't mind singing for you if you like it."

"Well, you _do_ have a really nice voice," he admitted. "But honestly, I won't ask. I don't want you to do it because you feel like you have to."

She smiled. "I'm not doing it for you because I think I have to. I'm doing it for you because I _want_ to."

* * *

As the summer wore on, Jack decided it was time to introduce his sister to Rapunzel.

He had had his doubts at first, but had ultimately decided that Emma was probably the most harmless person he could introduce to a mermaid. She was obsessed with Disney movies to the point of annoyance, and she had gone through a phase where she never shut up about The Little Mermaid. Jack figured she would be delighted to meet a real mermaid, and even if she did go blabbing to their parents, they would waive the whole thing off as a 5-year-old's overactive imagination.

Emma had passed her swim lessons with flying colors, much to the surprise of her family. She could swim all four strokes and even do sidestroke, which Jack himself could never do without sinking. He didn't have any concerns about taking her to the caves.

She was busy digging a moat around her sandcastle when he first proposed the idea to her. "Emma," he said, "What to do something more fun than that?"

She turned and looked at him dubiously. "What?"

He grinned. "I want to take you to meet a very special friend of mine."

She stuck her tongue out. "I don't care about your friends! They're all annoying!"

"Well, not this one," he said with a chuckle. "She's a lot of fun. We always meet up over by the caves a little ways down the beach, and I thought you might want to come."

His sister smirked. "Is _that_ where you've been going every day?"

He laughed. "Oh, you noticed!"

"Of course I noticed, dumbbutt." Only 5 years old, and Emma already had more attitude than the entirety of Jack's family.

"Well, do you want to come meet her?" he asked again.

"Yeah, okay," she said nonchalantly. "This sand castle is lame anyways." She gave it a shove for emphasis, causing the sandy palace to come toppling down in a heap.

As they sat waiting for Rapunzel on the ledge outside the biggest cave, Emma spoke up.

"So why is she special, anyway? Is she your girlfriend or something?"

Jack hoped his cheeks weren't turning pink. "Oh…oh, no! We're just friends. Nothing else."

"Oh, okay." Emma didn't sound convinced. Jack found himself staring at the rock below him, disappointed. He _wished_ he could say Rapunzel was his girlfriend.

When Rapunzel finally began rising out of the water, Emma looked confused at first, but let out an ear-splitting screech of delight as soon as she caught sight of the glittering pink fishtail where the blonde girl's legs should've been.

"She's a mermaid!" Emma squealed.

Rapunzel looked equally as excited. "You brought your sister!" she exclaimed.

Jack smiled as they studied each other in fascination. "Emma, this is Rapunzel. Rapunzel, this is my sister Emma."

"It's so nice to meet you!" Rapunzel bubbled. "Wow, you look so much like your brother."

Emma ignored her comment. "I knew mermaids existed! And grown-ups never believe me. Do you know Princess Ariel?"

"Oh, mermaids actually don't have kings and queens," Rapunzel tried to explain. "We have a direct democracy where we elect a president with supreme executive power, and then—" She cut herself off as soon as she saw the befuddled look on Emma's face. "Well, never mind. Who's Princess Ariel?"

"She's a mermaid princess who's dad was the mermaid king, but she fell in love with a human, so she changed to a human to be with him!" she gushed. "Are you in love with Jack, Rapunzel?"

Unlike Jack, Rapunzel wasn't able to hold back her blush. She looked to her friend for help, but he just gave her a sympathetic shrug.

"I think I'm too young to be in love with anybody," Rapunzel said with a nervous laugh. "You have to be all grown up, you know."

"That's not true!" Emma retorted. "There's a boy named Sam at kindergarten, and I'm in love with him because he can build really high block towers! And aren't you almost a grown-up, anyway?"

The blonde mermaid shook her head. "I've got a ways to go. You have to be eighteen to be a grown-up."

Emma shrugged. "Okay well, if you're ever in love with Jack, just find Ursula the sea witch and get her to give you legs. But she's gonna take away your voice."

"What?" Rapunzel stared at the little girl in confusion, clutching uneasily at her hair.

"It's from a movie," Jack explained quickly.

Rapunzel smiled. "Oh! Tell me about this movie."

Jack watched as his sister explained the plot of The Little Mermaid in as much detail as a 5-year-old could muster. His eyes met his friend's, and they reflected his own relief on having the subject changed from whether or not they were in love.

Rapunzel and Emma got along wonderfully, with Rapunzel being excited to hear about Emma's adventures in preschool and also more than willing to answer any questions the little girl had about mermaids. She also readily played with Emma whenever she asked her to, and Jack was happy to join in. The three youths romped about together in the waves, splashing each other and having a wonderful time.

When it came time for Rapunzel to go home, Emma turned and smirked at her brother as soon as the mermaid dived out of sight.

"She is _so_ your girlfriend," she declared on the way back to the beach.

"She is _not!_ You heard her say she's not in love with me!"

"Yeah, she said she wasn't _old_ enough," Emma scoffed. "That's the dumbest excuse ever. I know that's not a reason 'cuz I'm in love with Sam!"

"Well, Rapunzel and I are still just friends," Jack insisted.

His sister ignored him. "Wow, wait 'til I tell all my friends that my brother has a _mermaid_ for a girlfriend!"

"Hey, Emma…" Jack turned and grabbed his sister gently by the shoulders. "I need you to promise me something."

She gazed at him, puzzled. "What?"

He hesitated. "You…can't tell anyone about Rapunzel. Not even Mom and Dad."

The little girl looked crestfallen. "Why not? All my friends would be think she was so cool!"

Jack smiled and patted her head. "Well you see, mermaids are mysterious. They like to hide deep down in the ocean where no one can find them and live far away from humans. Rapunzel is scared that if it gets out mermaids exist, the humans might…try and put them in an aquarium. Take away their freedom."

"That's horrible!" Emma cried. "But _we_ wouldn't do that!"

Jack shook his head. "No, we wouldn't, but if you go around telling a bunch of people that you met a mermaid, some nasty person who would might catch wind. So this has to be our little secret, okay?"

Emma pouted for a while, but finally agreed. "All right," she muttered. "I won't tell anyone."

Feeling relieved, Jack pulled his sister into a hug. "Rapunzel will thank you for that," he told her.

* * *

 _Are you in love with Jack?_

It had seemed like such a simple question, even simpler coming from a 5-year-old. And yet Rapunzel couldn't stop thinking about it.

She'd had a crush on him for years. That much she knew for sure. Some part of her had wanted to be with him ever since he had gotten her untangled from that fishing net, all those years ago.

Perhaps it had only been because he was the only boy who she actually liked at the time. The only other two she knew were David and Ellsworth, two merboys in the very strict play-group her mother had put her in. They were both handsome enough. But David was mean and Ellsworth was bossy, and even though he was a human, Jack was the only boy who Rapunzel was interested in or intrigued by at all.

Whatever the reason for her childhood infatuation, it had stood the test of time. Even through her first year of high school and her relationship with Flynn, no one was quite able to compare to the human boy.

Sometimes she fantasized about Jack holding both her hands and gazing into her eyes and telling her how much he loved her…but she never let herself believe in the slightest it would ever happen. Mother had always told her she was much too clumsy and hyper for a boy to like her, and her one boyfriend was nothing more than an anomaly.

So she had decided that Jack could never know that she liked him. She would much rather have him stay her best friend than try and confess to him and deal with the heartbreak of him not feeling the same way. It was far less complicated to just keep things the way they always had been.

But then Emma had brought it up.

She had tried her best to come up with an answer that didn't confirm _or_ refute her feelings for Jack, to stuff the topic back into the ground. But something told her that it wasn't going to just vanish, not now that it was up in the air.

Jack had undoubtedly thought about it. And now _she_ was thinking about it. She was thinking about whether her crush of 8 years had turned into anything deeper. And for the first time, she was hoping there might come a day when she could tell Jack.

She only hoped that Emma wouldn't bring it up again.

* * *

 **Whoop, character study time! So the Rapunzel in this story has, unlike the one in the movie, caught on to the fact that her mother always wants her to sing. As a result, she has developed somewhat of a dislike for it because she kind of knows on a subconscious level that she's being used, and she thinks of singing as the object that her mother is using her for and loves more than her. Which, unfortunately, is true :(**

 **And yay, Emma! Lol she's a mouthy lil ball of sass, isn't she? XD But the best part about her is that she's making our two protagonists incredibly uncomfortable by bringing up THAT ONE THING WE'VE BEEN WAITING TO HAPPEN THIS ENTIRE TIME. Jackunzel may not be a thing just yet, but you can thank Emma for speeding the process along. Also, EmmaxSam is the REAL OTP. You came here for a JackxRapunzel story? PSYCHE, that was just a ruse to lure you in and now the rest of the story will center exclusively around the epic love story of Emma and Sam! *distorted maniacal laughter***

 **Okay, maybe not. But that ship is legit.**

 **And at long last, we get to see romantic feelings from Rapunzel's point of view! Turns out that SURPRISE, she liked Jack even longer than he liked her! Okay, it's probably not that surprising. We all knew she fancied him, just not to what extent. But now we do! And for the first time, she's actually CONSIDERING telling him how she feels eventually. One small step for Rapunzel, one giant leap for Jackunzel! Yer gonna have to wait a little longer for them to make out, but we're definitely getting there ;3**


	10. Age 16

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE PREVIEW PICTURE! IT BELONGS TO HoliMeiMei ON DEVIANTART! I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.**

 **Also, this particular chapter is rated M because...well, you'll see. Don't read it if you haven't heard of the birds and the bees and/or you don't want to spoil your innocence.**

* * *

When they were 16, Jack asked Rapunzel something that had been bothering him for a very long time. He thought he might have trouble getting an answer out of her, but it was worth a go.

"So Zellie," he piped up one day. "How do mermaids…you know…get down and dirty? Ride the flagpole? Play hide the salami?" She stared at him blankly.

He smirked. "You know… _make babies?_ "

"Augh, Jack!" Her hands flew to her face, and he could see between her thin fingers that her cheeks had turned as red as a fire hydrant. "You are so _gross!_ "

"What?" he pouted. "I'm curious! I mean…do mermen just swim around with their dicks out? Where do they put them?"

Rapunzel peeked out at him through her fingers. "Well, I…it comes out and goes in the…God, I can't believe I'm _talking_ about this!"

"Go on!" Jack grinned encouragingly.

She opened her mouth to continue, but rapidly shut it and crossed her arms at him. "I'm not telling you," she said stubbornly. "I can't talk about this with you. Or anyone, really…" She looked away and anxiously swished her tail about, smacking it against the rock.

"Rapunzel," he cooed in a sing-song voice. "I'll get you some pizza if you do!"

Her eyes lit up at that. Jack knew she had a taste for human food, and snuck it out to the caves whenever he could. It was difficult to swim with, obviously, but Rapunzel didn't mind if it got a little soggy. It was an improvement over the thoroughly-soaked food that she usually ate.

"Okay, fine," she sighed. "So the merman's…um…penis, is usually in this pouch in the tail, and only comes out when he's…er…turned on and stuff…"

"Oh, so _that's_ where they hide it!" Jack beamed in understanding.

"So mermaids have vaginas, but they're hidden behind flaps, so the flap lifts up when she's aroused, and then they…do it." Rapunzel glared at him, her cheeks still red. "There, happy now?"

Almost!" Jack replied cheerfully. "Tell me, do they do it in mermaid beds with erotic music playing in the background?"

Rapunzel shook her head. "They have to do it while swimming, but still someplace private. So it really rubs around in there. And they stop as soon as the merman ejaculates. Ugh, I can't believe I'm actually telling you this!"

"Hey, if it makes us even, I could tell you how humans do it—"

"NO!"

"Okay, okay. You sure do seem to know a lot," he teased. "Do you have any experience?"

She gave him the most venomous glare he had ever seen on her face, and he instantly felt guilty.

"I'm sorry, Zellie," he mumbled. "I was kidding, I swear. I didn't mean to imply that you've ever…not that it would matter if you did…"

In response, she turned and stared at the ground, tracing circles with her fingers.

"Wait." His brown eyes widened in horror. "Did that Flynn Rider guy take your—"

" _No!_ " she cut him off sharply. "Of course not. I wasn't ready. I only know about this stuff because my friend Merida got a hoot out of it when she heard Anna and I knew next to nothing. So she told us all about it."

"Does she have experience?" There was no accusation or disgust in his tone, only curiosity.

To his relief, Rapunzel laughed instead of glowering at him. "Merida? No way! She couldn't care less about merboys. She knows about it because…" Rapunzel's face grew bright with embarrassment again.

"Because what?" Some voice in Jack's head told him he shouldn't pry, but he couldn't help but wonder why a mermaid with no interest in dating would know so much about sex.

"She likes to write smut stories." The statement was so quiet that Jack had to strain to hear it. As soon as he did, he tried to hold back a snicker, but it didn't work for long.

"I knew you would laugh at me!" she snapped.

"I'm not laughing at _you_ ," he retorted. "I'm laughing at your friend. Who writes smut stories?"

"You're so mean." She looked genuinely crushed by the statement. "Why does it matter?"

 _Wow, I seem to be screwing up a lot in this conversation,_ Jack thought. He squirmed uncomfortably.

"Well, it is a little weird," he admitted. "But whatever floats her boat, I guess. Let's talk about something else."

He hoped that Rapunzel's warm look of relief meant that she'd forgiven him.

* * *

Eventually Jack worked up the courage to bring up the dating question again.

Of course, all he wanted was affirmation that she wasn't interested in any merboys so that his fantasies about lifting her out of the water by the waist and kissing her passionately would have a little more merit. And he was in luck.

"So Zellie, got any more bad boy merboys falling for you?"

"I haven't dated anyone since Flynn," she replied.

"Ah." He heaved an internal sigh of relief. "How about crushes, then? Had any of those?"

"N—no," she said, letting loose a nervous laugh. Jack regarded her suspiciously, sensing she wasn't telling the whole truth. His heart sunk a little. If she didn't tell him that she liked someone, how was he supposed to know if he had competition?

"You're blushing," he teased. "You like someone, dontcha? You wanna tell me who?"

"No, Jack, I really don't." Another nervous laugh. "I think Merida's starting to rub off on me. Maybe I just don't want to be like Anna…"

"Oh? Why?" Jack asked.

"She dates a lot, and it never ends well," Rapunzel explained. "She had a boyfriend Hans who used her for sex. And her next one, Kristoff, broke up with her because he thought she was too clingy."

"Oh, wow." Jack's expression grew sad. "That's unfortunate. My friend Hiccup has the opposite problem. He's been set on the same girl for _years_ , and he never gets anywhere with her!"

Rapunzel laughed, and Jack shook his head. "So what about you? Did you like anybody? Or date anybody?" she asked suddenly.

He had to stop and think about it before he could answer. Of course, Rapunzel herself would always be the one he wanted the most, but his mind did stray to one girl. One girl who his affections for would equalize him with Rapunzel and her upperclassman love interest.

"Well, there was this _one_ girl," he admitted timidly, running his fingers through his chocolate-brown hair. "In my English class. Toothiana. Hiccup was always going on about Astrid, so I thought I better find someone of my own to ramble about, you know? So I started liking Toothiana. But after about a couple months…" He chuckled. "I realized I only liked her because of her hair."

"Jack!" Rapunzel swatted him, but there was laughter in her green eyes. "That's terrible!"

"What? She dyed it rainbow!" Jack said defensively. "It looked like it was made out of silky, shiny skittles or something! Honestly, how could you _not_ stare at that? It was certainly more interesting than any of the plot diagrams for _Hamlet_ our English teacher drew on the board!"

"But you didn't ask her out?"

Jack grinned meekly. "Nah, didn't get the chance. She hooked up with this douchebag Aster Bunnymund on the football team." He shrugged. "Not like we would've lasted more than one date, anyway. I would've just ogled at her hair the whole time. Like, instead of staring at her boobs, I would stare at her flowing technicolor locks."

"Wait, so boys actually stare at boobs? That's not just a myth?" Rapunzel stuck her tongue out. "Yuck!"

Jack couldn't help but grin at her naivety. "'Fraid so Zellie. Tell me though, are you sure that you don't like anyone? I saw a little glint in your eyes when I asked you."

A short pause, and then she frowned. "No, I'm certain I don't." Something about her clipped tone told him it was time to drop the subject.

* * *

With his 16th birthday came Jack's driver's license, and the ownership of a car that had once been James's. He could see that Rapunzel was more than a little envious. In the mermaid world, only the richest families owned their own porpoise chariot, and everyone else had to pay to take a community chariot if they ever wanted to get anywhere. Rapunzel's meager allowance rarely allowed her to get far into the city, but luckily it was quite small and she was able to get to many places just by swimming.

He loved the freedom of having a car. Sometimes he would drive around town in the peaceful quiet of night, other times he would drive far into the surrounding forest on snaking, narrow roads. Often he would speed down the highway just for the thrill of it, just to feel the danger coursing through his veins. He'd gotten one too many a ticket for his yens, but the adrenaline spike was worth it. Besides, he got quite a bit of the money to pay the tickets off by charging Hiccup outrageous sums to go anywhere.

Although Rapunzel was still very much under her mother's thumb, it seemed she had, impressively enough, come up with a life plan. She was determined to study marine biology ( _what other kind of biology would a mermaid study, anyway?_ Jack wondered) and work at a rehabilitation center for abused carriage porpoises and sea lions. He saw her glow in a way she never had whenever she talked about it. She said it was a wonderful way to give her life meaning, and Jack had to agree.

He couldn't say as much about his own ambitions. Although his mother nagged him about choosing a college major, he was fairly certain that even after thinking about it further in the two years he had until graduation, he would still have to go in undeclared. He didn't have the slightest clue what he wanted to do with his life.

Not that Rapunzel judged him for it. She simply smiled, and said he still had plenty of time to figure out those things. He was glad that she wasn't of the common adult mindset that all teenagers should know without a doubt what sort of job they want. But he was also glad that Rapunzel had her heart set on something, and would never have to deal with the same struggle of uncertainty.

* * *

 **DON'T PRETEND YOU'VE NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT IT  
** **DON'T PRETEND YOU'VE NEVER FREAKING THOUGHT ABOUT IT  
** **IF YOU SAY YOU HAVEN'T YOU'RE A FREAKING LIAR  
** **WE'VE ALL WONDERED HOW MERMAIDS HAVE SEX  
** **YES, EVEN YOU, KEVIN  
** **AND YOU STACY  
** **YOU CANNOT FOOL ME**

 **Also, new headcanon! Modern-day!Merida writes smut in her spare time! Lol wouldn't it be the ultimate irony, though? The famously single Disney princess secretly gets joy out of porn XD Unfortunately Jack can't talk about this particular subject without constantly putting his foot in his mouth, so he has to change the subject X3 And yes, in my headcanon Modern-day!Hans is a fuckboi-in-disguise. If he can use a girl for a position of power, I can easily see him using one to fulfill his own bodily pleasures. And doesn't he freaking look like one?!**

 **So I headcanoned human!Tooth as being Latina with rainbow-dyed hair, which I was able to work into the story by having Jack be obsessed with her hair. Hey, if we're going to bring in and invalidate one character's canon shipping, why not do the same for the other one's? XD**

 **Also, yay for cars and life plans! It's good if you have both, but for many teenagers you're lucky if you even have one. Ah, reminds me of back in ye olden days, when I was in high school…and by "ye olden days" I mean roughly 6 months ago.**

 **Also, this is the LAST fluff chapter! Next chapter is when the plot gets up off its ass and gets going! Are you excited? Of course you are! But you have to wait an entire week because I'm evil :3**


	11. Age 17

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE PREVIEW PICTURE! IT BELONGS TO HoliMeiMei ON DEVIANTART! I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.**

* * *

When they were 17, Rapunzel's mother pulled her out of school.

On the very first day of his visit, he sensed the melancholy in his friend. Tail fins drooped, her shoulders slumped, her eyes devoid of their usual playful glimmer. She greeted him with the same cheerfulness as always, but something about her smile seemed empty.

"Are you okay?" he asked immediately.

She hesitated briefly before answering. "Actually, no. Something really horrible happened."

"Oh." Jack regarded her sympathetically. "What was it?"

"I was playing around with Anna and her older sister Elsa, and then Elsa accidentally shot some of her ice magic at Anna and…and she started to freeze to death! So the school called in the town sorcerer over to help, and all he could come up was this stupid cryptic thing about an 'act of true love' saving her. So we tried to think of something to save her…for the rest of the day, but…nothing worked. So I…"

Tears were starting to form in Rapunzel's peridot eyes. Jack pulled her close to him and wrapped his arms around her waist.

"I healed her myself," she continued, her voice shaking. "Mother told me over and over again to never use my powers on anyone but her, but…Anna's one of my best friends, Jack! I couldn't just let her die!" A tear trickled down the blonde mermaid's cheek.

"I tried to do it someplace private, this secluded part of the schoolyard no one ever goes to, but…this one kid happened to pass by and see me, and the next day _everyone_ at school knew I had a power. Mother, she…" Another tear.

"She was so furious! I mean, I've seen her get angry before, but never like that. She was screaming. She told me that she had given me one chance to prove I could function in the world, and I failed." Rapunzel was starting to sob now, her voice cracking. "And she said…I can't ever go to university. I can't even go back to high school! I just have to stay at home with her for the rest of my life, just being cooped up and singing and doing chores. Jack, I was so excited about getting out and living my own life, and now I'm _trapped_ again!"

All Jack could do was hold her close as she cried, whispering that it would be all right again and again. She buried her face in his chest, and he felt his heart quicken. He gently stroked her long hair, and planted a quick kiss on the top of her head. To his relief, she didn't seem to mind.

"They come to visit me sometimes," Rapunzel said, when her tears were starting to run out. "Anna and Merida. Sneak over to my house when they can. So that makes it better. But it'll never be the same…"

"I'm so sorry," he said.

Rapunzel leaned away from him and wiped the saltwater from her face. She grinned up at him.

"At least I still have you!" she said cheerily. "It's strange to think about, isn't it? All these years, and Mother still has no idea I'm sneaking out!"

"That's good." Jack smiled in relief. "I don't think you need another reason for her to be mad at you. No offense, but your mother kind of scares me, Rapunzel."

Rapunzel laughed softly. "No, I can see why. I know she only wants the best for me, but I wish she'd give me another chance."

 _Maybe she_ doesn't _want the best for you,_ Jack thought, gazing at her long locks of golden hair. He only barely stopped himself from speaking the words aloud.

* * *

One evening, as Rapunzel was about to go home, she turned and said something strange.

"Meet me out by the grassy beach tonight."

Jack regarded her, puzzled. "Why?" he asked.

"Oh, just because." Her eyes sparkled with uncharacteristic mischief.

He raised his eyebrows. "So whatever-it-is can't wait until tomorrow."

She grinned. "Nope!"

"Well…I suppose," he ventured finally. "The beach house isn't too far from here. And lucky for you, my family are all sound sleepers."

And so as soon as the stars had appeared like glinting dewdrops in the night sky, Jack made his way out onto the patio in his swim trunks, hoping that the wood underfoot wasn't creaking _that_ loudly. As soon as he had walked down the steps to the beach, he glanced at the row of cottages lining the sand. It was just after midnight. Most had flicked their inner lights off, emitting nothing but a dim yellow from the porch light.

The beach stretching out in front of him was mottled with light and dark, a strange mix of cutting black shadows and luminance cast by a far-off lighthouse, its glowing beams bringing out the soft gold of the sand.

It was a long walk to the place Rapunzel had mentioned, but Jack didn't mind. The beach felt soft and spongy beneath his bare feet. A chilly breeze brushed past the skin of his chest, and he smiled. He had always loved the cold. The night was utterly silent, save for small waves beating against the shore. The moon was a tiny white sliver, slipping behind buildings and trees and peeking out again as he walked.

Once he got past all of the beach houses and the town buildings drew further and further away, Jack knew he was getting close. At last he arrived at the place where the beach rose up into dunes and tall, shrubby grasses. Out in the water Rapunzel was waiting, her shape silhouetted against the swath of stars.

He dipped a foot into the surf, and smiled. Still warm from the day. He waded in to his knees, and Rapunzel swam over to him.

"Hey," she said.

"Hi."

"Do you like it?"

He scratched his head in confusion. "Like what?"

"How the ocean looks at night!" She beamed. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it's…" He struggled to find the right word. "Magical."

"I love coming out here at night," she said. "Everything is so still that it's almost surreal. And look how many stars you can see!" She leaned back so she was floating on her back, and Jack followed suit. He almost sunk a couple times as he was trying to balance himself on the water's surface, but Rapunzel grabbed his hand to steady him.

There were certainly a superfluity of celestial bodies. Jack could even see the faint outline of the Milky Way. That wasn't the most exciting thing, though. The most exciting thing was that it had been several seconds, and Rapunzel still had not let go of his hand.

At last she did, starting to beat her tail and propel herself around. "I love going for night swims," she said. "It just feels like…you're swimming in the sky."

Jack touched his feet onto the sandy bottom and looked out at the dark, sprawling ocean. It would've been hard to tell where the heavens met the sea if not for the slight way the reflected stars rippled and bended with the waves.

He floated around for a long time, splashing languidly at nothing in particular and focusing on nothing except Rapunzel and the sky and the stars and Rapunzel and the horizon and Rapunzel and the warm water beneath him and Rapunzel.

It was some kind of eternity and he never wanted to leave it.

After a while he started to hear soft music playing, and noticed that one of the faraway beach houses had lit up. "Looks like Craig and his frat buddies are getting wasted again," Jack said with a smirk. "Must be one hell of a par-tay. Wanna go crash it, Zellie?"

"You know very well the only parties I can crash are the underwater variety." Rapunzel crossed her arms, but her tone was teasing.

"Yeah, it's probably pretty lame, actually," Jack conceded. "They're all going to be hungover and miserable tomorrow anyway. Besides, they don't get to look at the stars, do they?" Rapunzel smiled and shook her head.

"Although," he added, "they _are_ playing some pretty sick tunes!"

"Hmmm…yeah, I guess so."

Suddenly, an idea came to Jack. He reached out his hand to Rapunzel, grinning. "May I have this dance, m'lady?"

Rapunzel rolled her eyes. "The water's not deep enough to dance, Jack!"

Jack shook his head. "No, not _mermaid_ dance! Like…people dance!"

She looked equally unimpressed. "I don't have any _legs_ , dummy!"

"All right, I'll lead then." He sloshed over to her and lifted her out of the water by her waist, causing her to let out a squeak of surprise. "Just put your arms around my neck. That's all you have to do, all right?"

"Okay." She gingerly laced her fingers together behind his neck, seeming slightly nervous at the intimacy. Jack had to admit he was feeling pretty weak himself.

"Now you just…" He hugged her waist and pulled her as close to him as he could. Their faces were mere inches apart now. "Just hold onto me and I'll do the rest. One, two, three…one, two, three…one, two, three…"

He tried to move his feet to the rhythm of the Coldplay blasting in the distance, but he knew he was fumbling. He hadn't done any waltzing since 8th grade cotillion.

For a long time he looked away, pretending to be focused on his shuffling feet. He couldn't look into Rapunzel's eyes, not when she was this close. He might do something stupid like tell her he liked her.

After a while he finally looked up, meeting her bright green gaze. He was convinced he'd never seen anything more beautiful. But the way she was looking at him sent tingles down his spine. Why was it almost… _expectant?_

"What is it?" he asked, fidgeting uncomfortably.

A pause. "Why are we wasting so much time?" she said softly.

His face fell. Did she think being with him was wasting time? "What do you—"

And just like that, her mouth was on his. He would have let out a yelp of surprise if she wasn't sucking all the breath out of him.

But once the shock had passed, he let himself savor the moment. Her lips were so soft and comfortable, just like he had always imagined they would be. She tasted like sea salt and coralberries. Warmth spread through his entire body, and he pulled her as close as he possibly could, feeling the cool touch of her smooth pink scales against his legs.

The longer they went on, the more insistent they both became. He lifted a leg to try and pull her tail closer, but it resulted in him losing his balance and sending them both toppling into the surf. Rapunzel let out a startled squeak as they hit the water and they pulled apart, laughing. Jack sat down in the shallow water, waves beating all around him. Rapunzel studied him uncertainly.

She opened her mouth to say something, but Jack didn't want to hear it. He didn't want her to apologize, say it didn't mean anything, say it was just a spur-of-the-moment impulse. He pulled her onto his lap and resumed the kiss.

It was a couple minutes before Jack pulled away. Rapunzel blushed, looking away and pulling a long strand of hair uneasily.

"So," he started awkwardly. "I had no idea you liked me."

Rapunzel giggled. "Well, then you're an idiot, Jack Overland. I've liked you for years! I guess when a cute boy pulls you out of a fishing net, it really makes an impression on you."

He smiled at her softly. "Really? Wow! I've liked you since I was 11, but I guess I kind of always thought you'd go for some hunky merboy. I just never really thought you'd want some skinny, boring human—"

"You're _not_ boring!" Rapunzel retorted, cutting him off. "I guess _I_ kind of always thought you'd never want me because Mother says I'm clumsy and chubby and immature—"

"Rapunzel." He gave her a hard look. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again. That's a load of shit. Don't listen to your mom. You want to know why?" He leaned in and gave her a little peck. "Because you're the only one I want. You're the reason all the girls at my school have always seemed so boring. I've been dreaming about you for years because you're amazing."

"I've been dreaming about you, too," she sighed. "I'm glad I don't have to keep it a secret anymore."

Jack glanced over at the beach to see that the party at Craig's house was already starting to wind down. Had they really been out here for that long?

"And I am definitely _not_ sleeping tonight," he added.

Rapunzel smiled mischievously. "Me either."

* * *

The next three weeks were euphoria. Jack and Rapunzel's fingers laced together during their conversations. They wrestled and play-fought on their ledge, which always ended up with them tangled in each other's arms. Sometimes they would spend hours lying close together on the rock, doing nothing but listening to their joint heartbeats. And, of course, there were long make-out sessions whenever either of them pleased.

Emma wouldn't stop gloating when she found out. "I _called_ it," she would say. "You always said 'oh, we're just friends' but I _always_ knew it was a load of poop. You guys were always making moony eyes at each other." And Jack let her gloat. After all, she was right…he and Rapunzel had hidden their feelings for a long time, but there was no need to anymore.

Sometimes Rapunzel would give a moment's notice ("Hold your breath, Jack") before pulling him underwater and kissing him. The first time they did it, he felt like his lungs were burning, and he came up spluttering for air. But after a couple more underwater kisses, they decided to start timing them and see how long Jack could stay under. They'd reached 2 minutes by the end of the summer.

On Jack's last day, the euphoria turned to crippling despair. Both of them were always sad when he left, but that year it felt as though their very worlds were crumbling. It didn't seem fair that their first month of being together had just flown by like a car on the freeway.

 _There's always next year,_ Jack reminded himself. It didn't help much.

"So…where do we go from here?" Rapunzel asked uneasily.

"Ah, well…" Jack chuckled. "If you're worried about me waiting for you, you don't have to be. I've been doing it for years anyway. The only difference now is that next year, I'll have more to look forward to!"

Rapunzel laughed shyly. "Right…I'll wait for you, too. But I can't help but wonder…I mean, you're here every year, but are you _always_ going to be? Are you ever going to…stop coming?"

Of course. She was thinking about his brother James, who was in college now and no longer went on the family vacation.

He shook his head. "Awww, Punz…you think I'd just run off and never return without telling you? Nope, I'm booked for this trip for a few more years. Besides, I could try and go to college here, or…or maybe even get a job here someday. Nah Zellie, I'm always going to come back to you."

Her entire face glowed, and she pulled him into a deep kiss. He returned it eagerly, wrapping his hands around her waist.

"That means a lot," she murmured after they had pulled apart. "Thank you."

He brushed a strand of hair out of her face. "We'll find a way to make this work. I promise."

They kissed again as the sun sunk into the ocean, turning the water a rippling golden.

"I have to go," Rapunzel sighed. "Mother's going to be home soon."

Jack nodded. "All right. See you next summer!"

As he watched her dive into the waves, he hadn't the faintest idea that he would not be returning the following year.

* * *

 **YES YES YES YES PLOT IS HAPPENING NOW**

 **Believe me, I was just as impatient as you were for them to just freaking kiss already, and NOW THEY DUN FINALLY DID IT! I hope that whole scene wasn't ridiculously corny and my attempt at visual imagery wasn't all forced and awkward. Sure felt like it ^^; Also, Craig gets the matchmaker-of-the-year award! Let's thank him for finally getting our two favorite annoyingly oblivious teenagers to make the fuck out.**

 **Eheheh, make of the ending what you will!**


	12. Afterlife

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE PREVIEW PICTURE! IT BELONGS TO HoliMeiMei ON DEVIANTART! I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.**

* * *

Jackson Overland never lived to see his 18th year.

It was an ice-skating accident that cut his life short. It wasn't a bad way to die, saving his sister from dangerous cracks and falling through himself. But it was far too soon for him to leave the world, with his entire life ahead of him and a girl he wanted to spend the rest of it with waiting patiently for him in a faraway cove.

At first he didn't remember anything when he rose out of the ice. All he knew was his new name—Jack Frost. He asked Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy, and the sandman what was going on (they were all real, apparently—who knew?), and they informed him that the Moon had chosen him as the new Jack Frost because the old one had been killed off by the Boogieman. It wasn't exactly a comforting thought.

To make matters even worse, he learned that not a single human being could see him. For all the snowballs he shaped and threw and all the icicles he whirled into place with his cold fingers, every passing stranger walked right through him, as though he was nothing more than a fragmented memory hanging in the air.

He spent that first winter creating snowstorms and flying with the wind, experimenting with his newfound powers. Luckily the Boogieman seemed to be leaving him alone, although he was constantly checking over his shoulder, holding on tight to his staff. Just in case.

It wasn't until spring that he started having the flashes.

They started out brief and perplexing. He saw the same mergirl over and over, blonde hair and green eyes and pink tail. He didn't know why she was the only thing in his apparently frozen-over memory. He saw flashes of her swimming, of her laughing, of her floating on her back and leaning up against rocks.

When the summer came, the flashes broadened into short scenes. He saw her singing to him and her hair lighting up like the sun. He saw her crying out in happiness as he pushed a cupcake toward her. He saw her thrashing in a fishing net and smiling in relief as he pulled it off of her. He saw her kissing him under a sky full of stars.

The strange thing was that she was not consistent through the fragmented memories. Sometimes she was a young girl, sometimes she was a baby-faced teenager, sometimes she was almost a grown woman. But Jack always knew it was the same girl.

And he didn't know who she was or what she meant to him, but every time he thought of her he was filled with a strange longing that hurt even more than the constant loneliness of never being seen.

As the summer came to an end, he had a chat with the tooth fairy (the closest thing he had to a friend, really) about his dilemma, and she said that if it would help at all, she could show him his memories. Jack, who had been completely unaware that the tooth fairy was storing away the memories of every person ever, happily agreed. He was more than ready to get some answers.

And he did. Everything came rushing back to him like a titlewave as soon as he ran his pale fingers over the top of his little cylindrical box. As soon as his eyes snapped open at the end of the memory reel, he was determined the find Rapunzel.

He couldn't for the life of him remember the name of that damned seaside resort he had gone to every year that he knew her. The memories the tooth fairy collected were based on emotion, not petty details like the name of the place where Jack would find his long-lost girlfriend.

He spent the chilly days of autumn searching along the coast, desperately looking for familiar caves or beach houses that matched the row his family had always stayed in. When winter came, he took a break from his looking and faithfully attended to his duties of frosting windows and freezing lakes and giving hopeful kids snow days. But as soon as March hit, he resumed his search for the mermaid. Various places were delighted to have an early spring that year.

All through spring, he searched without rest. He didn't take breaks to fly down to Australia and annoy the Easter bunny by making it snow all over his warren or fly up to the North Pole to steal some of Santa Claus's cookies. He had to find the caves. And he had to find them by early summer, because according to his memories, that's when Rapunzel would be waiting for him.

It so happened it was June 10 when he came upon the luxurious beach house with the stylized diamond and semicircle windows overlooking the ocean. The one his mother had always emptied her bank account to stay in because she had a taste for luxury that she refused to give up.

He flew a little ways down the beach, trying to recognize some of the other houses before he let himself get excited. He wasn't really sure he had found the right beach until he recognized Craig's house, palm trees outside strung with year-round yellow Christmas lights. When night fell, he watched the windows light up and listened to the ever-loudening shouts of college students as they played beer pong on the wooden deck. And after he waited a few hours, the house began to blare Coldplay music, just as it had the night he had danced with Rapunzel and kissed her after waiting far too long.

* * *

As if he hadn't already done enough waiting, it took 3 days of it by the caves for anything of interest to happen. Jack grew restless, sending snow flurries out into the open ocean and freezing and unfreezing the little cove around the ledge. Of course he had nothing better to do, since it was his off-season, but the mix of burning anticipation to see Rapunzel and fear that she wouldn't be able to see _him_ meant that he couldn't get a moment's peace. So he waited on the ledge, with something like impatience mixed with dread.

It was the morning of the third day when she popped up out of the water, just as she had for years and years and years.

His first feeling was relief. She hadn't given up on him, even after he'd abandoned her (albeit unknowingly) for a year. And from the way she was staring at him, she could clearly see him.

She was the first one to believe in him.

But the look in her eyes set him on edge. She didn't seem to be happy…or even relieved. Instead, her green eyes were stretched wide with what he could only describe as terror.

"Who are you?" He voice was small and quiet, but it sliced into him like a blade.

This wasn't a problem he had thought to deal with.

"Rapunzel, it's me!" he said. "It's Jack! Don't you recognize me?"

The fear started to fade from her gaze to be replaced by skepticism. Slowly, timidly, she pulled herself up onto the ledge where he was sitting. Scrutinizing him like something under a microscope, she lifted a hand and rested it on his cheek.

Almost as soon as she had put it down, she jerked it away. "You're freezing!" she yelped.

He smiled apologetically. "Well, um…it's kind of a long story. But I can—"

"You're not Jack," she cut him off sharply, her face twisting in disgust. "You just look like him."

Jack felt a sharp pang of dismay. Had he really come all this way to find this girl just for her not to believe he was who he said he was?

"No, Rapunzel, that's not true!" he insisted. "It's really, honestly me. Just let me explain." He reached out to grab her hand, but she yanked it away.

"Get away from me," she hissed. "What kind of sick joke is this? You think you can just show up and fool me into thinking you're my old boyfriend? I don't know who you are, but you're not Jack."

She scowled at him, and turned to dive back down into the water. He stared after her in distress.

"Zellie, c'mon!" he called out desperately.

She was almost to the water when she froze at the sound of her old nickname. She turned and stared at him in awe, like it was finally processing that this strange frost boy could be the same one that she had grown up with, that she had unknowingly left behind on the ledge for the last time two years prior.

And then she was inspecting him again. She ran her hands over every contour of his face and felt every spike of his hair. She reached under his hoodie to feel his bare back, picking out the lean-yet-strong muscles. His eyes were the last thing she looked at, looking for similar patterns in the icy blue that had once been brown. "Jack?" she whispered finally.

He responded with a smirk. "The one and only."

After that, she was seemingly convinced that despite the chilly skin and the differing hair and eye colors, this boy was in fact the same one who had visited her every year by the caves for 10 years. She slid back and took a deep breath, looking like she might be holding back tears.

"What happened to you?" she asked quietly.

"Ah, well, I was out ice-skating with my sister," he explained. "Ice started to crack. Kind of stupid of us to go out onto a random pond, I know. So I used this big stick thing—" He gestured to the staff lying next to him. "—to get her off the ice. But then I slipped, and the ice cracked, and I fell in. And then I woke up like this."

"Woke up where?" Rapunzel asked.

He laughed nervously. "That's where it gets weird. I woke up _in_ the water, but then this…force pulled me out. And then the Man in the Moon spoke to me and told me my name was Jack Frost. Nothing else." He sighed, feeling slightly bitter at the memory.

"And at first…I couldn't remember anything about my past. But you, Zellie…you were the first thing I remembered." Her face lit up at that, and he reached out to caress her cheek. To his relief, she didn't pull away.

"Once everything came back to me, I knew I had to find you, no matter how long it took. And here I am!" He smiled weakly. "I'm really sorry I couldn't be here last year and if you thought I'd abandoned you or something. It just took a long time to put all the pieces together, and I came as soon as I could—"

She cut him off with a bone-crushing hug, squeezing much harder than was comfortable. At last the tears fell freely, and in a few seconds she was crying heavily into his shoulder.

"I love you," she sobbed. "I…I wanted to tell you the last time I saw you, before you left for the year. But I was just so _scared!_ I thought that it was too soon, and you would think it was rushed, and…and now I'm just thinking that if the moon hadn't pulled you out of that stupid pond, then I never would've gotten the chance to say it!"

He pulled her even closer and kissed the top of her head. "I love you too, Rapunzel," he murmured in her ear. "And that is why I am never, ever going to leave you again."

* * *

 **LOOK, JUICY ANGST**

 **OH, WHAT A GREAT JOY TO WRITE! *evil laughter***

 **I didn't waste too much time on the whole Jack-remembering-Rapunzel thing, because I just wanted to breeze through and get straight to the good stuff. Besides, we all knew he was GOING to remember her and find her when he died and got reborn as Jack Frost, so what would be the point in dragging that part out? XD**

 **Okay, yeah, I could've dragged it out and made the whole remembering-Rapunzel a huge, engaging drama. BUT I WANTED TO GET TO THE FUCKING LOVE CONFESSION ALREADY. Also, if you're wondering why Rapunzel was able to see Jack so easily when no one else could…well, surprisingly, I actually thought that out! She genuinely believed he would be there waiting for her by the caves, and since she was fully expecting to see him, she certainly believed in his existence. Not as Jack Frost, but definitely Jack Overland…and for all intents and purposes here, they're the same person. It helped that she had no idea he was dead, so she had no reason to believe he no longer existed. Because this is a romance fanfiction, a year of absence didn't waver her faith that he would come back to her in the slightest. Yay fluff!**

 ** **Also, this chapter was originally planned to be about twice as long, but then I decided that the "I'm never leaving you again" line was a good place to end it, and it honestly just felt too long with the other stuff. So I chopped it off and saved it for next week! Why? Because I'm evil, that's why! Also, college is wearing me out and I just flat-out didn't feel like doing the proofreading and editing for the rest of the chapter. At least you get to enjoy this dumb thing for a whole extra week than originally planned XD****


	13. Limbo

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE PREVIEW PICTURE! IT BELONGS TO HoliMeiMei ON DEVIANTART! I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.**

* * *

They tried to pick up right where they had left off. The long kisses, the laced fingers…the conversations that lasted hours and still didn't feel long enough. But Jack had a nagging feeling that things could never be exactly the same as they were.

Rapunzel had matured, for one thing. Not mentally, no. She was still the same girl he had left behind two years ago, with her bubbling optimism and constant eagerness for anything fun. But physically she looked older. He face had grown less round and her cheeks less chubby, and her hair had grown another couple feet or so. The differences were subtle, but they reminded Jack that she was now 19. And he himself was still 17, not getting any older after his untimely death.

The thought of her aging scared him, but he forced himself to push it to the back of his mind. It wasn't an issue that had to be dealt with immediately, and for the time being she still looked more or less the same age as him. Right now, he was determined to enjoy his off-season, and was delighted that he got to stay with Rapunzel past July 6 for the very first time.

But Rapunzel…despite himself, he noticed she was acting different. She would hold him a little tighter, kiss him a little harder. When she had to leave him to go home every day, she would grab both his hands and act as if she was leaving him for a decade, not a night. And Jack knew exactly why. She was terrified of losing him again.

But she didn't have to be. He had promised not to leave her again, and he intended to keep that promise.

"So you said the moon told you your name was Jack Frost," Rapunzel piped up one day. "Jack Frost as in…the winter spirit? 'Nipping at your nose' Jack Frost?"

Jack chuckled. "That's the one. There was another one before me, though. I guess he's the guy you hear about in the legends and stuff."

"What happened to him?"

Jack looked away uncomfortably. "He…died. Did something to piss the Boogieman off, apparently. So I've made it a priority to not get on that guy's bad side."

"The Boogieman is _real?_ " Rapunzel bit her lip uneasily.

"Unfortunately," Jack sighed. "Luckily, he doesn't show his face much. He has a little hideaway down in Antarctica where he spends most of his time. The Guardians say he hasn't bothered them for years."

Rapunzel gazed at him in concern. "But what if he's after _you?_ "

"Nah." Jack smiled cockily, waving a hand in dismissal. "I'm not nearly as dumb as the last Jack Frost. From what the tooth fairy told me, he thought it would be a grand idea to prank the Boogieman by sneaking into his lair and freezing all of his nightmare sand. Needless to say, that really pissed him off. Nah Zellie, I'm not interested in pranking anyone _nearly_ as creepy as the Boogieman. I'd much rather annoy the Easter bunny."

Rapunzel still looked uncertain. "So…that's the only reason he killed him?"

"From what I understand," Jack replied. "Honestly, the guy sounds like _such_ a killjoy. I mean…murdering some kid just because he _pranked_ him? Kind of extreme. But hey, I'd say the best way to solve the problem is to stay well out of his way. He's like a bee, you know? Don't bother him, he won't bother you."

"Except instead of stinging you, he'll murder you."

The words made Jack wince but he forced a grin. "I'll be fine. Really, Zellie, stop worrying about me! Dude's not gonna go murdering me without provocation."

"Well he'd better not, because I'm not about to lose you twice." Rapunzel unexpectedly pulled him into a kiss, and he eagerly reciprocated. His lips were so cold now, but she didn't care. He was still Jack, the boy she'd been in love with for years. His hands wrapping around her waist were still as strong and sturdy as ever, even if their icy touch sent shivers down her spine now.

"So do you frost up windows?" Rapunzel asked after they had pulled apart. "Like the mythical Jack Frost?"

"Oh, sure." To demonstrate, he tapped his staff on the rock. Fronds and laces of frost curved over the hard surface. Rapunzel eagerly ran a hand over the designs.

"Do it again!" she demanded. Jack laughed at her bossy tone, but was happy to oblige.

He painted her anything she wanted. Curling geometric patterns, flowers, dolphins, sea turtles. She seemed excited by everything, her bubblegum tail wriggling like a puppy's.

"They're so beautiful," she sighed.

"Just like you," he added. She blushed bright pink.

"But you wanna see what else I can do?"

Her eyes widened. "Wait, there's _more?_ "

"Sure there is!" Jack leaned his staff down and touched the top of the water, causing it to freeze. The ice spread throughout the cove, reaching into the darkness of the caves.

Rapunzel leaned down and gingerly touched the now-frozen ocean, yelping at the cold and pulling her hand back. However, her face quickly broke into a wide smile and she lowered herself down onto the ice, gleefully slipping around on it.

Jack had to work to keep it frozen, since the hot summer sun was not exactly cooperating with his creations. Finally, he was thoroughly worn out and had to let the ice melt under the young mermaid. As she splashed into the cold water, she gave him a pouty look.

He smiled sheepishly. "Ah, sorry. It was draining my energy."

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Her pout instantly changed to an apologetic look.

He shrugged. "Well, it wasn't _that_ tiring. Besides, I don't mind getting tired for you."

To demonstrate his point, he formed a snow cloud over her head. She giggled as the little crystals began to billow around her and catch in her hair. She snatched at them with her hands, gazing at them before they melted away.

"But you want to know what the _best_ thing I can do is?" he asked, dissolving the snow cloud.

"What's that?" Rapunzel looked up.

He leapt up and hovered several feet above the ground, floating in lazy circles around the cove.

"You can _fly?_ "

"Sure." He let himself drop and settled next to her on the ledge. "You didn't think I came all this way to find you by _walking_ , now did you?"

"Well, I kind of thought you just took a plane," Rapunzel admitted.

He smirked. "Right, because winter spirits travel via plane with their fancy first-class boarding passes."

She swatted him. "Hey, I didn't know you could fly! I just figured since you're invisible, it wouldn't be that hard to sneak in a plane."

"Not that hard, no, but I'd go insane being cooped up for that long. Nah, it's a lot more fun to feel the wind in your face and not have to follow a flight path."

"You _used_ to be cooped up and follow a flight path." Rapunzel's eyes glinted with something like nostalgia. "Back when you flew here as a kid."

Jack looked away, suddenly wishing he could be young again. Young and alive, with a family that loved him and friends to hang out with and no Boogieman possibly wanting his blood.

"Well, I guess that's one of the great things about being dead," he said, forcing a smile. "You don't have to follow petty little mortal rules anymore."

Her face suddenly grew sad, and he felt a twist in his gut. He didn't know what it was, but he had said something to upset her. He quickly shrugged it off, trying to think of a way to cheer her up.

"Hey, wanna come for a fly with me?" he piped up.

She gazed at him, puzzled. "What?"

"I want to take you flying," he repeated. "Remember when we were kids, and you would take me for swims? You would go really, really fast and I would practically drown, but I loved it? Well, consider this payback for that."

"But…how?"

"You just lay on my back and wrap your arms around my neck and hold on really tight," he explained. "I'll do everything else." She looked uncertain. "If you fall, I'll be right there to catch you," he added hastily.

"O—okay." He pressed his belly into the rock, his head sitting at an uncomfortable angle as Rapunzel squirmed onto his back. She clasped her thin hands around him, and he could feel her heavy, nervous breathing on the back of his neck.

He started to rise into the air, and her grip around him tightened. Her tail was pressed flat against his back, the water dripping from it turning to ice as it touched his trousers.

And just like that, he shot into the sky. Rapunzel screamed, her long hair streaming out of the water and trailing behind her.

As they entered the cloud cover, her shrieks faded out. Her head pressed against his shoulder, she took one of her hands away from his neck and lifted it up, running it through the moist water droplets of cloud as they passed. He couldn't see her face, but Jack imagined her looking all around, trying to imprint in her mind the image of every single cloud.

"Pretty cool, huh?" he prompted.

"This is amazing," Rapunzel replied breathlessly.

"Well then, wait 'til you see _this_ ," Jack said. "Hold on tight, Zellie!"

She clutched his neck again, and he dived back through the cloud layer, spinning around and around like a bullet. Rapunzel screamed again, but this time with elation. Jack darted around the air with spins and flips, like some sort of aerial acrobat. Rapunzel had long since forgotten the terror of plummeting into the ocean far below, and could only think about the adrenaline raging through her blood like liquid fire and her heart beating a thousand times a minute.

At last Jack began to lower himself down toward the vast expanse of water, finding his way back to their caves with surprising ease. "Dizzy yet?" he asked.

"I might be sick," Rapunzel admitted.

He touched down on the ledge and she rolled off his back. To his relief she didn't vomit, but they both lay there panting for several seconds.

Finally Jack sat up, and Rapunzel followed suit, leaning against him. She took his hand and laced her fingers with his.

"It's just like those fairy tale books Mother used to get me," she said. "About mermaids learning to swim up into the sky."

"Maybe they were all on the backs of winter spirits," Jack replied, a sly grin on his face.

Rapunzel rolled her eyes. "Or maybe some of them got pulled out of frozen ponds and got magical powers, just like you. Stop trying to give winter spirits all the glory!"

He raised his eyebrows. "Do mermaids even live in ponds?"

She shrugged. "Beats me. I've never been outside this body of water to check."

"I don't feel like they'd fit. I just think someone would notice if they kept glimpsing long, billowy hair and brightly-colored fishtails under their fishing boat."

"Not if the mermaids were smart!" Rapunzel argued. "They could just hide in the swampgrass or the mud every time there were humans nearby."

"Well, yes, but they'd have to eat," Jack countered. "So, presuming mermaids live off of a diet of fish and aquatic plants, nearby fishermen and wildlife catalogers would start to notice the disappearance of fish and plants in the pond. Also, if they accidentally eat too many fish and they die out, BOOM. Mermaids starve. They can't just get out and walk to another pond!"

"So they contact one of the flying mermaids from earlier to get them to another pond!"

"Oh, so mermaids can communicate via telepathy now?"

"Well…maybe! They gained the ability to fly, who knows what else they can do?"

"The Man in the Moon doesn't grant telepathy powers!"

"Not to _you!_ Maybe to mermaids because we're better than humans!" At this, she stuck her tongue out at him like a little kid.

"Hey!" He glared at her. "I'm the one who just let you fly for the first time!"

She snorted. "Only because I let you swim with me!"

"Fair enough," Jack sighed. "Tell you what. How about we make out and then call it even?"

Rapunzel grinned. "Sounds good to me. And then we're finishing this discussion!"

They both leaned it and mashed their lips together, thoughts of mermaids in ponds fading as their tongues pressed together and their mouths filled with heat.

* * *

"Are you not even going to _try?_ "

Pitch ran a finger down the little black fairy's back, giving her his familiar cunning smirk.

"Dearest Ebony, we can't corrupt this one. I made a mistake killing off the last one. He was much better suited, but I threw away my chance."

The fairy crossed her tiny arms. "He refused to join you! And then _destroyed_ half of your nightmare sand!"

Pitch chuckled. "Just showed he had spirit. I'd say the kid was just bitter and looking for someone to hate, and unfortunately he settled on me instead of the Guardians. No, he certainly had the sort of temperament I could use, but he was stubborn." Pitch sighed wistfully. "That's why I got rid of him. Looking back, I wish I had tried harder to sway him."

"So what's wrong with the new kid?" Ebony asked. "Why can't you corrupt him? Maybe he'll be more impressionable."

"No, my dear, I'm afraid not. Not at all."

"How do you know?" Ebony snapped. "Corruption can't be that hard! I mean, you corrupted _me!_ "

"Ah, but you were _easy_ , my dear." Pitch petted the fairy's head, regarding her mockingly. "You were filled with anger. Anger that your glittering rainbow-feathered boss got to lounge in her palace day in and day out while you did all the work. All I did was embellish something that was already there."

"So what makes you think the new kid isn't angry? Or bitter?" Ebony shot back. "No one believes in him. He doesn't know why the Moon chose him. He's got no one for company except the Guardians themselves, and out of them he only actually likes Toothiana. And even then it's only really because she's all he has. There's no real loyalty there. So…" The little black fairy searched him with piercing amber eyes identical to his own. "Why don't we shut up and corrupt him?"

"Because you're wrong, Ebony!" Pitch spat with such ferocity that the mouthy fairy winced. "Toothiana isn't all Jack has, as much as I wish that were true. Don't you know about his lovely mermaid girlfriend?"

"A _mermaid?_ " Ebony gawked in disbelief. "Together with a spirit? How on earth did _that_ happen?"

"Oh, never mind how it happened," Pitch growled. "That's anyone's guess. Point is, this mergirl is in love with him. Which means she _believes_ in him. I've been watching them, Ebony…and believe me, from what I see, it looks as though he's barely concerned with getting believers anymore. He could live the rest of his pathetic existence being seen by no one but that stupid blonde, and he'd be fine with it."

Ebony didn't look impressed. "I don't see why that's such an obstacle. We just kill her, and then he's angry and bitter again. We can corrupt him them."

Pitch laughed darkly. "I think you fail to see the issue here. For one thing, he's not a complete moron. It wouldn't be that hard for him to trace her death back to us. But the central problem is that he's _capable_ of love. Deep, unfaltering, unconditional love. You can't just override something like that."

"Oh, that's ridiculous," Ebony huffed. "The Moon always chooses people capable of love. Hell, they usually make some sacrifice in the name of it to be chosen in the first place! If you want a Jack Frost who can't love, you're going to be waiting forever."

"Ah, but you see, my dear, most of the chosen wake up with a clean slate. They can't remember a thing about who they were in their mortal lives, or the people they cared for. But this one…he didn't. He remembered the blonde mermaid girl for some reason. Which means that right from the start, he's been useless to us. His love for this girl's going to hold him back, prevent him from ever being able to be fully corrupted."

"That's such a load of rot," the black fairy scoffed. "We can use his feelings for her as a _means_ of corrupting him. She's not going to live forever. All we have to do is wait her life out and then take advantage of the kid's grief to get him on our side."

Pitch smirked. "Well, that _does_ sound like a lot of fun. There's nothing I'd enjoy more than watching that cocky boy squirm as his beautiful girlfriend shrivels with age. But unfortunately, he would probably still refuse to join us out of principle. Because that's not what _she_ would have wanted."

Ebony sighed. "So you really think he's that loyal?"

"Yes. I've seen them together. And anyhow, I'm not willing to wait around to see if he is or not. I want to go to war with the Guardians _soon_ , and we're going to need allies."

"All right. So what do you suggest we do?"

Pitch sighed, shuffling his feet restlessly. "We kill Jack Frost and hope we have slightly better luck with the next one."

* * *

 **Yay, Jack Frost-using-his-ice-powers-to-entertain-Rapunzel fluff! Always a fun time, right? Heh, I originally wasn't going to include that whole bit and the first half of the chapter was just going to be angst and exposition, but then I was like…fuck it, I've just put both these characters through a lot of shit, I'm going to let them have some fun! But then when they got into an argument about whether mermaids live in ponds, I wasn't actually sure where that would end up, so I just decided to have them make out and call it a day XD**

 ** **And now—are you ready for it—ACTUAL BAD GUYS! You thought this story wouldn't have any physical antagonists? YOU THOUGHT WRONG! JK, you probably saw this coming from a mile away because Pitch Black is ALWAYS the bad guy in non-modern AU Jackunzel fics…but what can I say? He's a damn good villain and he can fuck shit up real bad, making for some fantastic conflict/drama for your fanfic. And god, I freaking LOVE Ebony XD She was originally just a character I made up and threw in there solely so that Pitch could have a minion and have someone to tell his evil plans to, but as I wrote her, I got super hyped up about what a mouthy little bitch she is. She ain't taking shit from no one, the Nightmare King or otherwise! I have half a mind to give her her own spin-off fanfiction XD****


	14. Scheming

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE PREVIEW PICTURE! IT BELONGS TO HoliMeiMei ON DEVIANTART! I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.**

* * *

"So what's the plan? Are you just going to stab him and walk away?"

Ebony sat on Pitch's shoulder, following his gaze as he peeked out of the alleyway. He chuckled and stroked her head.

"Not quite, my dear. The mermaid girl has magic powers, and I don't quite know the extent of them. We need to get her out of the picture before we can do anything."

Ebony let out at exasperated sigh. "So we _are_ going to kill her."

" _We_ are not going to do anything with her," Pitch retorted. "We need someone to get her away from him so that he's vulnerable. And I don't imagine that will be too hard."

"Okay." The fairy batted her wings in frustration. "What are we waiting around for, then?"

Pitch gazed off into the distance cryptically. "The right person."

* * *

The two twin brothers raced through the alleyway, thick muscles rippling under their dark green shirts and bags of money swung haphazardly over their shoulders. To their relief, the sounds of police sirens were getting farther and farther away, and the hefty side door that looked like it led to a good hiding place was drawing ever closer.

One of them, his face adorned with a black eyepatch, stopped abruptly and looked anxiously around. "Something's not right, Bronson," he said, his voice shaking. "This place gives me the creeps. I think…I think someone's watching us."

The other whipped around to face him. "Are you insane?" he snarled. "There's going to be plenty of people watching us in _jail_ if we don't get a move on! Now stop being such a baby and help me get through that door!"

"I'm serious," the man with the eyepatch said insistently. "It's like…something's lurking in the shadows. I don't know what, but _something_. Maybe we should try a different alley."

"Oh, shut it, Vaughn!" Bronson snapped. "Do you really think we have the time? The cops are practically on top of us!"

Vaughn wanted to argue, feeling a danger far greater than any cop car hovering just out of sight, but he certainly was not ready to get thrown in jail again. Sighing, he followed Bronson, casting apprehensive glances at the looming shadows cast by the tall buildings on either side of them.

Suddenly, there was a swishing noise up ahead, and a cloud of blackness exploded from the ground. It cleared to reveal a tall, creepy man with slicked-back black hair, sickly gray skin, and piercing amber eyes. Both brothers started.

"It would appear you were right, Vaughn," he jeered. "Looks like something _was_ hiding in the shadows." The man had what appeared to be a little black fairy with a long, pointed nose perched on his shoulder, but that didn't make the image any less frightening.

Despite himself, Vaughn couldn't help but give his brother a triumphant smirk. Bronson elbowed him in the side, hard.

"Get out of the way," Bronson growled. "We've got somewhere we're going, if you _don't_ mind."

"Ah, yes. Robbing a convenience store and then trying to hide. How original." The tall man laced his fingers together and contemplated the twins.

"We don't have time for this." Bronson pulled a shotgun out of his pocket and aimed it right at the tall man's head. "Now _get out of the way!_ "

The tall man laughed coldly. "Oh, you think you can hurt me with _that?_ Sorry to rain on your burglaring parade, but it's going to take more than a few bullets to get rid of me."

Without waiting to hear more, Bronson pulled the trigger and sent a bullet sailing right into the tall man's head. It took him a few shocked seconds to register that it had gone right through, denting the brick wall at the end of the alley before falling unceremoniously to the ground.

"Nice try," the tall man said with a chuckle. "An admirable effort, really. But even if you were to kill me, your entire escape plan would be for naught." He glanced behind him, and then back at the brothers. "That door you were planning on escaping through is locked."

For the first time, fear began to creep into Bronson's eyes. Whether it was because this strange man had just survived a bullet to the brain or their escape route had been invalidated, Vaughn couldn't tell.

The sirens drew closer and closer, until they came to a sudden halt right outside the alley. The tall man smirked. "Oh look, here are the cops now."

The brothers exchanged a terrified glance. Before either could react, the tall man was on top of them, shoving them both simultaneously against the wall of one of the buildings. They stood their ground, frozen with fear, as the odd man did something even more surprising. He rubbed his pallid hands together rapidly, creating handful after handful of black sand. Making a series of waving motions, he formed the black sand into something like a force field, using it block out all three of them.

Within minutes, footsteps and voices echoed through the alley. Vaughn couldn't see a thing through the black forcefield, but he knew it was the police.

"Coulda sworn they came down this way! Am I crazy?"

"Nah, they definitely did. Saw them turn in here myself. But it's a dead end…where the hell did they go?"

"Through that door?" The sound of more footsteps, and then the loud rattling of a metal door.

"Drat! It's locked!"

"They couldn't have gone in, then."

"Nah, I'll bet those bastards locked us out. Where else could they have gone? There's no sign of them anywhere!

"Yeah, that's true."

"Why don't we get in at the other side of the building? If we're fast, we can nab them before they can even make it out the front door."

"Fine by me. Let's get out of there. This alleyway's starting to give me the heebie-jeebies."

The smick-smack of running feet on pavement fading out signaled that the police had left the alleyway. The tall man lowered his hands, and the force field dissolved in little dark swirls.

The two brothers exchanged shocked glances before looking back at the tall man. "Uh…thanks," Vaughn managed finally.

"Don't mention it." The tall man waved a hand dismissively. "Now the way I see it, you boys have two options. Either you can keep running away with your meager stolen money and see how long you can elude the cops, or…you can put that cash right back where it came from and get yourselves something much more valuable."

Bronson curled his lip. "How stupid do you think we are?" he sneered. "Why should we trust that you have anything better?"

"Well, I _did_ just save both your skins from prison," the tall man deadpanned. "I could've just backed off and let the both of you get arrested…but I didn't, for some reason. Anyway, the choice is entirely yours."

"So you wanna tell us what exactly it is you're giving us?" Bronson growled.

The tall man's yellow eyes glinting with malice. "Well, you might not be aware, but there are mermaids living in the bay nearby. Real, living, breathing mermaids. Mermaids with priceless scales. But this isn't just any mermaid." He laughed dryly. "Oh no, this mermaid's hair is laced with the healing powers of a magic golden flower. All you have to do is sing a special song…and you can stay young and healthy forever."

Vaughn's lips curled up into a cruel grin. He could believe it. If strange men could materialize out of black clouds and create forcefields out of sand, then mermaids didn't seem like a far stretch.

He turned and regarded his brother. "I think it sounds like a good idea."

"Yeah, but how are we even going to get the money back to the store without being caught?" Bronson demanded.

"Oh, don't worry, my assistant will take care of that," the tall man replied.

Clearly the fairy had other ideas. "How am I supposed to carry those heavy bags on my own, you moron?" she snapped.

The tall man looked down at the pointy-nosed creature and seemed to decide that she had a point. "Very well," he sighed. "I'll take the money back to the store myself, but only if you give me your word that you'll wait right here until I get back."

"Of course we'll stay," Bronson grunted. "We want the mermaid, pretty boy. But what if the cops come back?"

"I'll just put up another forcefield." The tall man set to work making one, creating more of his black sand and molding it into a wall. "You'll just look like another shadow. The same way you did before."

"So what do we have to do to get the mermaid?" Vaughn asked.

The tall man smiled darkly. "Once I get back? Exactly what I say."

* * *

 **And now, kids, we take a break from our annoying sappy lovebird protagonists and have an entire chapter dedicated to the BAD GUYS! Any guesses as to who the two robbers are? JK, it's painfully obvious. I'm not even going to bother playing this up as some suspenseful guessing game because this is the most obvious thing to ever obvious. Anyhow, ya like the names I gave them? :D I searched up "overly-manly criminal names" (or something of the like…I wrote this part a while ago) and it didn't take long to come across the lovely overly-manly criminal names of Vaughn and Bronson XD So what is that shifty Pitch up to? Guess you'll have to wait until next Wednesday to find out, in the grand fucking finale!**

 **And hooooooly shit, I can't believe this is the second-to-last chapter! Like damn…that 14 weeks sure went by fast. As usual, I'm a little saddened to be finishing something I submit on a regular basis. Having a schedule for submitting fanfiction parts weekly gives me the illusion of productivity and having my life together XD And I'm in college…god knows I need that! Luckily for me, I have been getting several more ideas for multi-part fanfictions as of late, so before too long I will, once again, be submitting a story on a weekly schedule and fueling my illusion of productivity. Until then, I'll see you suckers next week!**


	15. New Beginnings

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE PREVIEW PICTURE! IT BELONGS TO HoliMeiMei ON DEVIANTART! I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.**

* * *

"Why don't we go somewhere else today?"

Jack gave Rapunzel a puzzled look.

"I'm just thinking…why do we bother hanging around this boring ledge when there's an entire ocean out there to explore?" she went on. "It's not like your family's keeping an eye on you anymore. And as long as we go somewhere where we won't run into my mother…well, there's just no need for us to stay."

She wasn't about to tell him about the nightmare she had the previous night, where they had both been talking on the ledge like always when an enormous, vile green sea serpent had cascaded out of the surf, engulfing Jack in its fanged jaws before Rapunzel could so much as process what was happening. She wasn't about to tell him how loudly she had screamed, clawing the beast with her fingernails over and over in a vain attempt to hurt it only to watch it yank itself away and retreat back into the ocean, leaving the rock beside her as silent as a graveyard. She wasn't about to tell him how she had floated aimlessly in the ocean for what seemed like months, years, eons, before finding herself washed up on a quiet, desolate beach where the wind whispered _You will be safe here_ over and over again.

Normally she didn't take dreams so seriously. But this one had felt so inexplicably, terrifyingly…real.

And that was why she had to get Jack to that beach. But if she told him why, she had no doubts he would laugh at her.

Jack shrugged. "All right, we can leave if you want. I guess I always assumed that you stayed here to keep yourself hidden."

"Oh, I do. But…there's this beach I found. It's really pretty, but no one ever goes there. I know because I used to go and watch it, before you came back. It's always deserted." Her throat stung with the lies. She had no idea how to get to the beach from her dream, or even if it would be as empty as she thought. But she was certain it was real, and she was certain Jack would be safe there.

Jack didn't look convinced. "A pretty beach? With no tourists?"

"Well, it's surrounded by woodland, so maybe that's why it's secluded," she offered. "I've been there a million times. But come on Jack, we've been hanging around these same caves for _years!_ Let's do something else."

He raised his eyebrows. "I thought you liked them."

"I do, but…some novelty never hurts, you know?"

Finally he nodded. "All right. Take me to this magical hidden beach which somehow repels tourists."

She giggled. "All right!"

As she swam out into the sea, she decided her best approach would be to just follow the coastline. If she passed by any public beaches then she would have to give them a wide berth, but other than that, the coast should take her straight to the dream-beach.

She passed by the craggy rocks where Jack had once untangled her from a fishing net, all those years ago. The winter spirit followed her a few feet above the water. The rugged shoreline seemed to stretch forever, but once she caught sight of some human houses in the distance she decided it was better to swim a little ways under the surface.

The rocks gave way to a beach overgrown with grass and reeds, which rapidly turned back into another rocky shore. By this point, Jack seemed to have sensed her uncertainty.

"So you've been there a million times, eh?" he said. "You sure do seem lost for someone who knows exactly where they're going."

Rapunzel turned and smiled up at him meekly. "Well, I haven't been there in a _while_. Give me a break! But we're getting close now, I can feel it."

And she _could_ feel it. She couldn't quite explain, but it was almost as if some invisible force was pulling her right toward the dream-beach. With every paddle closer, she felt a little more relief and a little less dread.

 _No sea monster will be able to get him on land,_ she thought triumphantly.

She made her way through a maze of rocks jutting out of the ocean like gloomy gray spires. Her heart sped up as she caught sight of treetops in the distance.

And at last, she turned a corner and there was the beach from the dream, surrounded by billowing trees and completely silent save for the whispering breeze. All around it was nothing but forest, with no humans or human dwellings anywhere in sight.

"This is it!" Rapunzel gasped excitedly. She wriggled out onto the sand, making her way as far away from the surf as she possibly could in hopes that Jack would follow.

She heard him snicker behind her, and turned to give him a puzzled look. "What is it?"

He smirked. "You look like a seal when you flop around on land."

She glowered at him. "Hey!"

"But you're a really cute seal, so it's okay." He hovered down to the ground, strolling over to where she was lying. He grinned as he dug his toes into the white sand. "This is nice, Zellie."

"I know right? I knew you would like it!" Rapunzel buried her tail in the sand and whipped it up, tossing several grains into the air.

He laid down next to her, and for a while they were content to throw sand at one another and then lump it into various sculptures, which Jack froze into place. After a while, though, Rapunzel started to notice Jack shooting uneasy glances at the trees behind them.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Something about that forest," he admitted. "It gives me the creeps."

She wanted to reassure him, tell him she was certain they were safe there. Tell him that the monsters in the ocean were so much worse than anything that lurked in the woods. But she had to admit…she agreed with him. The same force that had pulled her here seemed like it was just past her, in those woods…and she had a feeling that it wasn't quite as friendly as she had thought.

"I'm going to go see if I can see anything in there," he said.

"Okay." Rapunzel forced a smile, but she wasn't too keen on the idea.

He only walked a few feet away, but she suddenly felt strangely vulnerable. She was a literal fish out of water, unable to run away if anything came after her.

She watched Jack from a distance as he squinted into the forest, leaning his head into the shadows while trying to get a good look at whatever it was he was seeing. She barely had time to register the shock on his face before she also registered the feet pounding on the sand behind her, and thick hands grabbing her from behind.

* * *

"Why, hello Jack."

Jack Frost's heart practically stopped as he took in the tall, gray-skinned man, his amber eyes boring into the winter spirit hungrily. So here he was, the boogieman. Jack had never seen him before, but who else could it be?

"Y—you!" he choked out.

Pitch smiled maliciously. "I've finally found you, it seems. A pity you can't just fly away."

" _What?_ " Jack stared at him in confusion.

"Well, you _can_ ," Pitch corrected himself. "But you wouldn't want to leave your precious girlfriend, now would you?"

Right on cue, there was a loud scream nearby. Jack's head whipped around. "Rapunzel!"

In a heartbeat he was gone, racing across the sand to the struggling mermaid. Vaughn had her by her wrists, dragging her back toward a net that Bronson had dropped.

He raised his staff, ready to shoot ice at Rapunzel's captor. What he didn't see was Bronson creeping up behind him, nightmare dagger in hand.

The moan he gave as the blade drove into his back was nothing compared to Rapunzel's cries of anguish. She screamed bloody murder as he toppled to the ground, silver blood streaming out of his chest like a sticky river of mercury.

"Let me heal him!" she shrieked. "I promise I'll stop trying to escape if you do!" she stopped struggling long enough to give her captor a pleading look. "You can…take me anywhere you like, do whatever you want to me. I'll never fight back, or…or try to get away. Just _let me heal him!_ "

"Not likely, sweetheart," Bronson growled, kicking Jack's writhing body.

Pitch smirked, amused by the girl's desperation. "Oh, let her give it a go," he jeered. "It's not going to change anything. It'll be fun to watch the light die from those beautiful eyes of hers when she realizes her precious healing powers don't work on spirits."

Rapunzel gave him a venomous look, but didn't seem any less determined. Pitch brought his gaze up to meet Vaughn's. The burly man nodded in assent, letting go of the mermaid's wrists. Bronson gave a grunt of disapproval, but did nothing further to protest.

As Jack watched Rapunzel slide across the sand toward him, all notions of her resembling a seal were quickly forgotten. She streaked toward him with more strength than he had thought possible, the muscles in her tail rippling and flexing gracefully. His vision was already beginning to blur with pain as she held his face in her hands.

"Jack," she whimpered. "I'm so, so sorry. But everything is going to be okay, I promise."

"'Snot your fault, Punz," he wheezed as she set to work wrapping her hair around his wound. She smiled at him sadly. There was no time to tell him about her dream, and how it had led her here because she thought she was keeping him safe. But all it had done was ensure the exact opposite would happen.

"But…those men…you can't go with them," he gasped. She placed a gentle hand on his cheek. "I have to," she murmured. "I promised them."

He shook his head rapidly. "But I'm not worth it! You can't do this."

She blinked back tears. "Yes…I can."

" _Flower gleam and glow  
_ _Let your powers_ —AAAHHH!"

She cut off the song as a sharp searing pain cut right down the center of her tail. Jack let out another groan, and she was reminded that her time was running out. Sucking in her breath, she started again.

 _"_ _Flower gleam and glow  
_ _Let your powers shine  
_ _Make the clock reverse  
_ _Bring back what once_ —AUGH!"

Another ripple of pain, this one even worse than the first one. It felt as though the very skin of her tail was being ripped open.

"Oh, now _this_ is getting interesting!" Pitch exclaimed in delight.

Bronson looked at him accusingly. "What's happening to her?" he growled.

"Oh, stop worrying!" The nightmare king waved a hand dismissively. "Whatever it is, I'm sure you'll still get your mermaid scales at the end of the day."

Rapunzel looked down at Jack. He was fading quickly, his pale skin becoming colder and colder to the touch. The boogieman had come to kill Jack Frost, and if she didn't act fast, he would do just that.

 _I'm going to finish, no matter what happens. For him,_ she decided. She gritted her teeth and started again.

" _Flower gleam and glow  
_ _Let your powers shine  
_ _Make the clock reverse  
_ _Bring back what once was mine_

 _Heal what has been hurt  
_ _Change the fate's design  
_ _Save what has been lost  
_ _Bring back what once was mine  
_ _What once was mine_ "

As she began the second verse, the pain reached a high. The tearing sensation spread down her tail again, and her skin was swelling, pushing out all of her scales. Her flesh was bubbling and changing, deforming into something else. She didn't dare look.

Instead she focused on Jack, peering at him through her tears of pain. Light was coursing through her hair, but he was still motionless, his eyes slipping shut. His skin was still too cold. Was it working? It had to work.

"No no no…" she whimpered. "Jack, stay with me please! I love you…I _need_ you! JACK!"

At last, the skin beneath her fingers started to grow warmer. But, strangely, after a few seconds it had far surpassed its usual coolness. And was it her imagination, or was it starting to regain some color?

It was almost as if he was coming back to…

Life?

As the last of the glow faded from her hair, it seemed to breathe life into his. The hairs on the top of his head began to darken, slowly at first but quickly spreading until all of the once-white hair had become dark brown. He opened his eyes, and they were chocolate.

Jack Overland was back.

She let out an excited squee and pulled him into her arms. He was going to be all right. The wound in his chest was completely closed up. And he was _warm_ again! He was warm and brown-eyed and human and all of the things that she hadn't realized she missed.

So her hair had worked its magic too well. Not only had it healed Jack's wound, but it had healed his very _immortality_.

Rapunzel buried her face in Jack's hair and breathed in the smell of his shampoo. Somehow it still lingered, even after he'd spent a year and a half as a winter spirit. He returned the hug gratefully, and she loved how warm his hands felt on her bare back.

"I love you so much," she murmured.

As he pulled away, he looked her in the eyes and smiled. "I love you too."

Rapunzel reached out and brushed a strand of muddy hair out of his face. "I thought I was going to lose you."

Jack grinned. "Nope, I have to stick around and annoy you for as long as I can!" He looked past her, and his eyes widened in shock. "But Rapunzel…your tail…"

She cringed. The worst of the pain had gone as soon as the healing song ended, but she didn't want to see what it had done to her. "Is it bad?" she asked.

"Well, it's just…not a tail anymore…"

Finding herself guiltily curious as to what he was talking about, Rapunzel snuck a glance against her better judgement. Upon seeing the sight behind her, she let out a cry of alarm.

Scattered all around her were dozens of pink scales, sticking out of the sand like bright seashells. They glinted and dazzled in the sunlight, looking just as beautiful after being separated from their owner as they had looked on her. Her tail had torn right in half, pushing out its scales to form…

Two human legs.

* * *

"You _bastard!_ " Bronson had Pitch Black shoved up against a tree, meaty fingers encircling his throat. "Did you know that was going to happen?"

"Of course I didn't," Pitch snapped. "I'm just as surprised as you are. But you can still have the scales."

Bronson squinted at the nightmare king, unconvinced. Vaughn tapped his brother on the shoulder and pointed at the pink scales encircling Rapunzel's newly-created legs. "He's right, you know."

"Oh." Bronson loosened his grip on Pitch, looking kind of embarrassed. "Well, go get them, then!" he snapped at his brother, trying to continue to seem aggressive.

"What about the girl? And her hair?" Vaughn asked.

Bronson considered. "Leave her," he said finally. "Taking a hostage sounds like too much work, anyway. Besides…if she can heal spirits, I'm a little scared of what else she can do."

"But you heard what she said. She'll come with us willingly. And she could make us so goddamn _rich_ …"

"Yeah, and I was told we were getting a goddamn mermaid!" Bronson snarled. "She's a damned rip-off. Do you know how much harder it would be to keep a girl prisoner if she's got legs to run away with?"

"But she said she wouldn't—"

"Yeah, well, I don't believe her! Not to mention Lover Boy would come to the rescue the first chance he got. Unless Mr. Creepy here wants to try and kill him again?"

But as they turned to look at the nightmare king, he had already vanished, stealing back to his lair to await the choosing of the next Jack Frost. He may not have managed to kill this one, but he supposed him being turned mortal was just as effective in forcing the Moon to pick a new one.

"So that's a no, then," Bronson grunted. "Anyway, I'm not interested in the girl's hair. Just go get the scales and we're leaving."

Vaughn nodded reluctantly. He thought it was rather stupid, wasting the opportunity to profit off of glowing hair, but Bronson was the boss. Perhaps one day, when all of the scales had been sold and the money spent and they were broke once again, he would be able to tell him _I told you so_.

* * *

Rapunzel couldn't stop staring at her new appendages. She flapped her legs apart and together again, taking in the alien sensation of being able to move them separately. She glanced back at the sea and felt a sharp stab of loss. She couldn't breathe underwater anymore, never see any of her friends or her mother again. She could feel the tears returning, although now they were formed from distress.

"Zellie, I'm so sorry," Jack gasped. "You…you gave up being a mermaid…to heal _me_ …"

"Don't apologize, you didn't know it would happen," she told him quickly, trying to keep her voice steady. "Besides, shouldn't _I_ be apologizing to _you?_ I took away all of your powers and made you just…a normal person again!"

Jack shook his head. "You saved my life! I'd rather be human than dead."

The conversation paused as their attention focused on the burly man coming toward them. He was the same one who had been dragging Rapunzel back by her wrists earlier, and he had quite the sour look on his face. She hurriedly snapped her legs together, covering her privates. Her shoulders sagged as she remembered her hasty promise to go with the men.

The last thing she wanted to do was be torn away from Jack, so soon after she almost lost him. But a promise was a promise.

"I guess you—" she started, but the man cut her off.

"Listen, kid. You let us take your scales, and we'll let you go. Sound like a deal?"

Rapunzel wiped away her tears and nodded enthusiastically, beaming. She would've liked to keep the scales, as a reminder of the ocean she had once called home. But they were a small price to pay for her freedom.

"I wouldn't have let him take you anyway," Jack added, shooting the man a poisonous glare.

"I doubt that, sonny," the burly man growled, but he made no move to touch the blonde as he set to work plucking the scales out of the sand and cramming them into a satchel swung over his shoulder.

"I guess this is what Mother meant by overexerting my power," Rapunzel sniffed. "Makes sense that healing a spirit would put a strain on it. But being turned into a human is apparently the punishment."

"That seems odd," Jack muttered. "Wouldn't that just use _more_ magic?"

"Perhaps our very existence requires magic." She forced a smile. "Unlike you boring, mundane humans, who can just exist without any sort of…anything."

"Hey!" He glared at her, but she could see he was holding back a laugh. "I'll have you know that it takes two other humans having hot sex for a human to exist! And that's a _special_ kind of magic." He winked at her.

Jack's tone grew serious. "I am really sorry, though. That this happened to you because you saved me. If I had any idea, I would've—"

"Jack, I love you," she cut him off. She reached out and grabbed his hand, entwining their fingers. "I'd do anything to save you. And if I'd known this would happen to me…I still would've saved you. A thousand times over."

He frowned. "But I'm not worth you _losing_ yourself…"

"I _haven't_ lost myself," she argued. "I'm still the exact same person, just with a different bottom half. And honestly I don't think this has to be a punishment."

"Really?"

"It's…it's going to take some getting used to, sure." Her voice cracked slightly, and she had to fight back more tears as she thought of the life she was leaving forever. "But do you know what this means?"

"You…look really hot as a human?" Jack tried, grinning.

She smiled coyly, letting go of his hand and wrapping her arms around his neck. She pressed her body against his, leaning her face in until it was inches from his.

"We can be together," she whispered. "Wasn't that always sort of a problem? You flying around up here and me swimming around down there? We couldn't keep things as simple as they were forever…just kissing and messing around and hoping no one found us. We couldn't really share our lives. But now we can."

She pressed her mouth against his, and the kiss was deep and lingering. Jack Overland's kisses had all of the heat that Jack Frost's kisses had lacked. She pulled him as close as she possibly could, breathing in all of the things she had missed so desperately in the darkest recesses of her mind. She wrapped her legs around his waist, marveling at how strange it felt. This was their first human kiss, and she absolutely loved it.

By the time their makeout session had ended, the burly man had finished collecting the scales, and he and his brother had left. Rapunzel was delighted by the increased privacy.

"I, uh…I hope you're not too mad at me for accidentally healing away your powers," she mumbled.

"Nah, don't worry about it," he said casually. "At least Pitch won't be on my tail anymore. And I was getting kind of worried about the immortality thing, to be honest. Didn't want to see you get all old and wrinkly without me, you know?"

Jack looked up at the sky, his expression wistful. "Not that I'm not going to miss some things. The flying…and making it snow, of course. Painting windows. But hey." He looked at her and met her eyes, his gaze soft. "We both had to give up something."

"Yeah. Now we just have to…start over, I guess."

"We can head to the town, figure something out. But our _first_ order of business"—he shot a disapproving look at her bare legs—"is to get you some pants, Rapunzel!"

Rapunzel blushed bright red, remembering that humans were always supposed to have their lower body covered.

She smiled sheepishly. "Sorry about that."

"Ah, no worries. We'll solve that problem soon enough. Just find a bunch of seaweed and hang it down over your naughty bits for now."

"Okay, sounds good!"

As Jack was standing up, his eyes landed on something shiny. He leaned down and plucked two pink scales from the sand. Rapunzel's eyes lit up.

"Looks like Mr. Scarybulk missed a couple," Jack said. He dropped them into Rapunzel's palm, and she safely tucked them into her seashell bra (which was the only thing convincing Jack that they didn't need to immediately get her a shirt as well).

"So, Zellie…are you ready to start our new life together?" Jack extended a hand to Rapunzel, and she took it.

"Yes. I can't think of anything I'd like better."

* * *

 **Aaaaaand…cut! Yep, that's it. That's the story. I hope you like the ending I chose, because I'm pretty happy with it :D Kinda tricky coming up with it since…well, a winter spirit who can never age and a mermaid who lives underwater are probably going to have difficulties going about a long-term relationship XD Buuuuut I managed to make everything work out by MAGIC…literally! "Oh come on Infra, you totally pulled that Rapunzel-ovrexerting-her-powers-and-growing-human-legs thing out of your ass!" you say indignantly. WRONG, remember how I hinted at it allllllll the way back in chapter 4? No? Okay, fair enough, 11 weeks is a pretty long time. Fine, maybe I DID sort of pull it out of my ass to resolve all the conflicts, but hey, AT LEAST I FORESHADOWED IT!**

 **Okay, so I really like this AU and I have a lot of ideas for it that I couldn't use in the actual story for continuity reasons, so I might do some AU spin-offs (yes, AUs of an AU XD) just so I can have the chance to write those stories that take place in alternate timelines of this AU. And maybe, MAYBE, a sequel is in order someday. Not anytime soon, to be sure, since I have a whole, WHOLE lot of ideas that I want to get to first, but maybe someday if and when I get my life together and figure out what order I'm going to write down all the goddamn fanfictions floating around in my head ^^; Just a heads-up, but I might never get around to sequel, so be warned.**

 **So I hope you enjoy this angst and fluff-ridden conclusion to the saga that is Caves and Cold waters. And with it goes the last bit of order in my life, which will soon descend into complete and utter chaos with essay deadlines and final exams fast approaching. So long, and please hope for my sanity. See you all over Christmas break, when I will hopefully be binge-writing fanfiction to recover!**


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